Knocked Up
by dickard23
Summary: Azula did everything right. She conquered Ba Sing Se. She killed the Avatar, but now she's pregnant. In fear of her life and refusing to name the father, Azula has to figure out how she is going to survive the war. What will happen to the child or to the baby's father. Azula X ? It's got fluff, limes, and maybe a lemon or two, some dark stuff (could trigger) but a happy ending.
1. Chapter 1

This is somewhat AU. Assume everything in the show happened until after the fall of Ba Sing Se, but I added new scenes before the fall, which explains why the Day of the Black Sun invasion is different, as well as everything afterwards.

* * *

Azula groaned. She just wanted to leave. Ty Lee convinced her to go to the royal doctor after puking for three days straight.

"It was probably bad ramen," Azula said.

"But Mai and I had the ramen, and we didn't get sick."

Azula frowned. "Maybe my immune system is weaker."

"You never call yourself weak."

Azula rolled her eyes.

The doctor was ready for her. "Do you have any symptoms other than vomiting?" he asked her.

Azula thought for a moment. "Well, I've been getting tired more easily."

"And are your cycles regular?" he asked.

Azula frowned. "I missed one a few weeks ago, but that's normal at my age, right?"

"It is but …"

Ty Lee's eyes got huge. She knew what he was implying. "Azula, have you had sex in the last two months."

Only once, Azula thought. "Why?"

The doctor and the acrobat looked at each other. Neither of them was willing to say what was starting to become evident. Finally, Ty Lee suggested, "Maybe you're pregnant."

Azula looked appalled. "I can't be pregnant!" Ozai will kill her.

"So you used protection?" Maybe it's a fluke.

Azula frowned. "I meant to get some tea the next day, but I think I forgot." Azula tried to think back to that morning, but she couldn't remember drinking it. DAMN!

The doctor gulped. "Maybe we should just keep this to ourselves and hope it's a false alarm." He knew how Ozai would react. They all knew.

Azula got up. "This can't be happening." She ran off before Ty Lee could stop her.

* * *

Unsure of what to do, the chi blocker went to ask Lo and Li for help.

The two sisters were sharing a cup of tea when she found them.

"Ty Lee, what brings you here?" Lo asked, or was it Li?

"I came to see if Azula was better."

"She was sick?"

"She's been vomiting lately."

"Well, I hope it's nothing serious."

They saw Ty Lee frown.

"She isn't ill, is she?"

"Ill isn't exactly the correct word."

Lo and Li looked at each other. They had seen this in the trade many times. Their princess was pregnant, and if she didn't get out of here, she would be in grave danger.

"We should prepare their vacation house at Ember Island," Li finally said.

Lo nodded. "We must get her out of the palace before it's more evident."

* * *

The Gaang was getting ready to invade the Fire Nation. The Mechanist had made them submarines and weapons, so they could attack the Palace.

Sokka was ecstatic. He had maps and plans and he would finally be able to prove he was more than just the non-bending lackey.

"We move in three days time," Sokka told them.

Katara was nervous. Last time they fought the Fire Nation, Azula killed Aang, and this time, Katara had no spirit water to revive him.

Toph was ready to knock heads. "A princess without her bending, not too scary!"

Aang was just hoping they got the timing right. If they went too early or too late, it would be for naught. It might even ruin their war efforts all together.

"Toph, ready to train?"

"You mean am I ready to kick your tiny butt. Yeah let's do it."

* * *

Zuko was so confused. He had everything he was supposed to want, first in line to the throne, he was back with Mai, but without his uncle, it just felt hollow. Did he make a mistake in joining his sister? She had never really invited him into anything before. It had always been her and Ozai, Zuko and Ursa.

He went to talk to her. He hadn't seen her in a few days.

"Did you come here to gloat?" she frowned.

"Gloat about what?"

He didn't know. "Never mind."

"Is something wrong?"

"No. I'm just as happy as a turtle crab," she said dryly.

Zuko could never tell what was in her head. "Do you think Mom is still alive?" As soon as the question came out of his mouth, he wondered why he had asked her. How would she know and even if she did, why would she tell him the truth? She always lies.

Azula shrugged. "I have no idea," she said honestly. She knew her disappearance was connected to Azulon's death and Ozai skipping over Iroh for the throne, but she wasn't sure exactly what happened. Ozai had been ready to kill Zuko, but then he didn't. Maybe Azulon banished Ursa instead as a way to punish Ozai. That didn't seem quite right, but she wasn't sure. "Why now?"

"What?"

"She's been gone for almost six years. Why ask me now?"

Because if she were here, she would tell me what to do. "I don't know. Doesn't it bother you that she never said where she was going or why?"

"Maybe she didn't want us to find her."

"You can't think that!"

"Maybe she thought Ozai would follow us to get to her."

Zuko frowned. That actually did make sense. "Do you think we'll ever find out what happened to her?"

Azula frowned. "I don't know if Ozai will ever tell us. Maybe there's another way." Excuse me, Azula left to go hurl.

"She never gets sick," Zuko said to himself. "How odd?"

Azula came back. "As you can tell, I'm not well."

"Are you like really sick or …?"

"Just food poisoning. You won't get rid of me that fast."

"Well whatever you ate, I don't want to eat it."

"Don't go to Ming's ramen house."

"I never liked that place anyway."

"Of course. You don't like food with flavor."

Zuko rolled his eyes.

* * *

**Day of the Black Sun**

The submarines were on the move. Sokka was leading the charge into the Fire Nation.

When they got to shore, however, they found that their vessels were under attack. Qin had developed a counterattack for the invaders.

"We're screwed," Hakoda realized. He looked to his son. "This is your invasion. What do we do?"

Sokka had to decide right now. "Forge ahead. We have to hope for the best." If they surrender now, they're screwed anyway. They may as well try to take out Ozai now.

They stormed the palace. Aang and Katara kissed before they went their separate ways.

* * *

Sokka, Aang and Toph found the bunker to see Azula sitting in a throne. She looked pissed off, like she didn't want to be there.

"Where's the Loser Lord?" Toph hissed at her.

"What?" Azula looked like she hadn't even been listening.

"Ozai, where is he?"

"Obviously not in here." She didn't get up out of her chair.

Sokka drew his sword. "You don't have your bending right now. You best cooperate."

"Why? Aang is a pacifist. He won't let you kill me."

Aang frowned. She had a point. Then he got pissed off. "It doesn't mean we won't harm you."

He had his fists raised.

"Go ahead and try."

He took a swing at her, but he missed. Even pregnant, she was still very quick. He went back and forth, but he couldn't seem to land one blow.

Toph frowned. She felt a fifth heartbeat. "Who else is in here?"

Sokka looked at her. "What? It's just us against Azula."

Toph frowned. "I feel five heartbeats," but she couldn't feel anyone hiding. That only made sense if, "you're pregnant!"

"Shh!" Azula hissed. "If my father hears you, he'll kill me."

Sokka made a face. Who the hell would sleep with her?

"Who's the father?" Aang asked her.

"That's none of your business!"

The time was dwindling. Azula knew they would never get to her father in time. "You best run, before the guards come back."

"Why should we listen to you?" Toph hissed.

"Because you're running out of time. I have nothing to gain by your capture."

"You don't?"

"If Ozai wins, I die. If you win, I get put to death for war crimes. It makes no difference to me whether or not you win, but it makes a difference to you, so get out of here."

Toph could feel the guards approach. "They are coming. We gotta go."

Aang felt bad. Azula might die because she was having a child.

"Come on!" Sokka grabbed him and they ran.

* * *

While they were leaving, Zuko was preparing his war balloon. He had to get out of here before Ozai had him declared a traitor. He only hoped the Avatar would accept his help after what he had done.

He felt bad breaking up with Mai in a note, but he had no time to explain. He just had to go.

The rebellious prince took off for the skies, hoping this somehow all panned out in the end.

**Western Air Temple**

Sokka buried his head in his hands. His invasion was a total disaster. His father and his men were captured. They never even saw Ozai. Azula was even too apathetic to fight them.

"We couldn't get past a pregnant teenager who didn't bother to throw a punch."

Aang frowned. "Should we have taken her with us?"

"Are you mad? Why would we do that?"

"Because she's pregnant."

Sokka hadn't really thought of the baby as a person yet. "Maybe her dad won't be that mad."

"Are you nuts?" Toph said. "She's as good as dead. He burnt off his son's face for speaking out of turn. Being knocked up is like 10 times worse than that."

Sokka gulped. "Why didn't you say that before?"

"We were running for our lives, Snoozles!"

"Oh yeah. She's resourceful. Maybe she'll just run away."

Toph frowned. "Now that you mention it, we could have used a firebending teacher for you."

Sokka shook his head. "So there was a way to make the invasion not totally fail and I botched that too!"

Out of no where, a bomb went off.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" Katara screamed.

Combustion man had arrived. They were about to get a healthy dose of danger.

The group started to run. "What the heck is that thing?" Sokka yelled.

"My guess is a hit man," Toph retorted.

"Who would send a hit man?" Aang questioned.

"Take a guess," Toph snapped.

"Ozai?"

"Or one of his children," Katara said.

"Damn it!" Sokka yelled. "Why can't anything go right around here?"

Zuko landed his war balloon and found the group running. "Let me join you!"

"Who's that?" Aang questioned, not seeing anyone.

"It's Zuko!" Toph told him.

"Hell no!" Katara yelled at him. "You got Aang killed."

"I'm sorry okay! I can teach him how to firebend."

"Can you get this hit man to leave us alone?" Sokka questioned.

Zuko tried to negotiate with the man he hired only to get attacked. He had to sprint away. The man had burned off his shirt. "I tried to call him off, but he wouldn't listen."

"YOU HIRED HIM!" Katara yelled.

"OOPS!" Zuko should have said Azula hired him. Damn it!

* * *

The royal doctor suggested to Ozai that Azula go to Ember Island to recover.

"Recover from what?"

"She got a nasty infection. It's passed through on its own, but she's weak still. I think some fresh hair and sun would do her some good."

"Whatever." One kid was a traitor, the other was a weakling and she lied to him. She would be punished once she was better.

Lo and Li took her to the family vacation house.

"What am I going to do? Hide here until I give birth?"

Lo and Li didn't know what came next. "Hopefully, we can get you out of here before you start showing."

Azula groaned. Zuko fled and now she's fleeing, so much for the great line of Sozin! "I just need to lie down."

When she closed her eyes, she would hear his voice and feel his hands on her skin. She couldn't forget the night that caused this whole mess, and she wished she could. "One night of foolishness will cost me my crown, probably my life." For the princess who was always in control, this was unfathomable.

* * *

Zuko tried to prove his loyalty by taking on Combustion Man by himself, but he was not faring so well.

His firebending was weak for some reason. He couldn't seem to fuel it.

Eventually, Toph aided him, launching boulders at the assassin. He started to stumble. Sokka threw his boomerang, knocking him off the temple, presumably killing him.

Zuko collapsed on the ground in exhaustion. "Finally!"

The four had to decide what to do with him.

"We can't trust him," Katara insisted. "He's the one who almost got us killed in the first place."

"But he tried to make up for it," Toph said. "Even if his firebending sucked."

Sokka frowned. "Will he make much of a teacher?"

Aang decided to give Zuko a chance. He regretted not trying to help Azula. Maybe if he helped Zuko, they could go back for her.

Katara's words were harsh. "If you betray us again, it will cost you your life."

Zuko gulped. Accepted but not quite, Zuko would have to take it.

* * *

Ty Lee and Mai went to join Azula in the vacation house. Mai still couldn't believe she got pregnant. "No offense, but I figured you would have been the teen pregnancy case," Mai said to Ty Lee.

Ty Lee shrugged. "Me too. I had a couple of scares in the circus."

"Did she tell you …?"

"No. She won't talk about that night or him."

"Was she …?"

"She said she wasn't." Who knows if this is true?

"You don't think it's (Ozai's)?"

"I hope not!"

Azula started to stir.

Mai was cutting the pits out of Azula's cherries. It was one of the few foods she could keep down. "How long can we get away with hiding out here?"

"I'm not sure. We should probably try to leave before her second trimester starts."

"When is that?"

"I think in six weeks."

Mai had some distant cousins who might take in a knocked up Princess. "I have some letters to write."

* * *

Over the next week, Zuko tried to get his firebending back. "My source is gone."

"You're what?" Aang questioned.

"Firebending is derived from within, unlike the other elements. You need both good breath and a source, a spark, something to get you excited. I used to use my anger to fuel me, but now that I left my father, I don't have the anger. I don't have anything to generate my bending."

"So your jerkbending failed when you stopped being a jerk," Sokka quipped.

"Maybe you should try the first firebenders," Toph suggested. "I learned from the badger moles."

"The sky bison are the first airbenders. Maybe I could learn from you Appa," Aang said.

"There are no more dragons," Zuko said sadly.

"But when I was a kid, there were plenty of …"

"THEY'RE ALL DEAD!" Zuko snapped. "Iroh killed the last one."

Toph frowned. "Maybe you could try the Sun Warrior's temple. The ruins might have something."

The two boys went there and Aang almost lost his foot in a trap.

"You set of traps easily, don't you," Zuko teased.

They got the top. "I cant' wait until the solstice!"

Zuko reflected the light with his sword. They got inside and saw the statues depicting the dancing dragon.

"I think we're supposed to do this dance together," Aang told him.

Zuko frowned, but he tried it. They met in the middle and the sun warrior appeared. "Who are you and why did you come here?"

"I'm the Avatar."

"And I'm Prince Zuko."

"We wanted to learn the true meaning of firebending."

"Well, maybe the dragons will teach you."

He took them to Ran and Shao and the dragons looked at them before starting their dance.

Both men were taken aback by the beautiful show.

Afterwards, Zuko tried to produce a flame. "It's back!"

"Let's go!"

On the way back, Aang asked Zuko about his sister. "Are you worried about her?"

"Why would I worry about her?"

"Ozai must be mad."

"Because I defected?"

"Because she's pregnant," Aang told him.

"WHAT?" Zuko screamed. "She can't be!" He thought she was a lesbian.

"Toph felt a second heartbeat."

Zuko frowned. Was it Ozai's? He couldn't imagine she willingly had sex. "This sounds awful, but for her sake, I hope she miscarries."

Aang gulped. They had to try to help her.

**One week later**

Sokka, however, had a different rescue mission planned. "We have to go to Boiling Rock and get Dad."

"No one's ever escaped from it before," Zuko cautioned.

"So you won't go."

"I'll go. I'm just letting you know it's not going to be a cake walk."

The two boys took off for the isolated prison. They ambushed two guards and got their uniforms, which worked until Sokka found Suki.

Zuko tried to keep a guard from seeing them and he got caught.

* * *

Ozai was furious. He demanded Azula go kill her brother.

Azula read the summons. "We have to go deal with Zuzu."

"What?" Mai questioned.

"His dumb ass got caught trying to stage a prison break."

Mai's face fell.

Azula was holding Zuko's death warrant in her hands.

The three girls went to the prison, not speaking much at all.

Azula didn't want to kill her brother. Normally, she wouldn't care about death, but ever since she found out she was pregnant, the war started to feel repulsive, like it was bad for her baby or something.

"Do babies make you weak?" She asked her friends.

"What?" Mai was baffled by the question. "Well, you probably won't fight as well pregnant, but I think you knew that."

"I meant my willpower. It's like my thoughts are changing now."

Ty Lee shrugged. "It might be the hormones."

"This really sucks!"

Mai couldn't disagree.

Zuko found himself alone in a cell. This can't get much worse, he realized, until a stiletto went right in front of his face and into the wall.

"That was a good one," he said weakly.

"How, I missed?" Mai stared at him, holding the letter he had sent her. He had a lot of explaining to do.

* * *

Azula frowned. "How long does she need to yell at him?" Azula wanted to throw a lightening bolt in him and get the hell out of there. Maybe she should steal Zuko's war balloon and run away, that sounded really good right now. Actually, if she ran away, she wouldn't even have to bother to kill him.

"Ty Lee, let's go."

Before the chi blocker could ask where, Azula ran to the top of the prison. She saw Sokka and his comrades getting into the ship.

"Not so fast," She said.

Sokka freaked. "We gotta go."

"And leave Zuko?" Suki frowned.

"If we don't go now, we'll be dead and thus, we'll leave Zuko anyway."

Azula said, "take me with you."

"WHAT?" Sokka yelled. "No way!"

"Take me with you or I'm cutting the rope!"

Sokka frowned. "Fine!"

Azula jumped on board. Ty Lee followed her.

Mai understood why Zuko left. "You should have told me."

"I didn't have time."

"You had weeks to wonder if you should have sided with your uncle and you didn't even mention it to me."

Oh that. "I'm sorry, but …" The alarm went off.

They ran to the top of the prison to see the warden taken hostage.

"CUT THE ROPE!" He yelled to his niece.

Azula yelled, "Don't you dare."

"Why is she on board?" Zuko questioned.

Mai jumped on the ship. "Let's go."

Katara and the others anxiously awaited their return. "I hope Sokka didn't get himself captured," or worse killed.

When they saw a war balloon, they were relieved until Azula got out. "You suck at landing," she yelled at her brother. His crash made her want to puke.

"The balloon was overweight by like four people."

Azula threw up. "Sure, blame the passengers. You're a terrible captain!"

Katara frowned. "What is SHE doing here?"

Azula grinned. "Nice to see you too, Peasant!"

"YOU LITTLE!" She charged at Azula only to get grabbed by Aang.

"She's pregnant. You can't fight her."

"See, Peasant!"

Aang frowned at her. "All that negativity isn't good for the baby."

"What do you know? You've never had a baby."

"My past lives have. That counts!"

"Does not!" All of the girls yelled at him.

Suki still couldn't believe this all. "Who's the father?" she asked her boyfriend.

"No one knows."

* * *

Needless to say, Ozai wasn't amused when he learned his daughter and her friends had run away with Zuko and his posse. "What the hell is wrong with her?" Ozai snapped. He never should have let her go to Ember Island. He never should have sent her to capture her brother. He should have kept her at home, where she couldn't cause any trouble where she was only his.

Azula left almost as quickly as Zuko did. Was this the plan? Were they running away together all along?

Ozai needed answers and he ordered the royal doctor to his office.

The man was a nervous wreck. He knew Ozai suspected something, but what did he think. The doctor took a puff of opium to calm himself before facing the vicious Fire Lord.

"Doctor."

"My Lord," he bowed.

"What was wrong with Azula?"

"She was vomiting repeatedly. She thought it was bad ramen, but I contacted the restaurant and there had been no complaints. There was a flu going around, so I assumed she caught it."

"And how long does it take to recover from the flu?"

"It can take a week. A week past, and Azula seemed lethargic, so I suggested a few days on the beach so she could get some air."

"Well, she got some air," Ozai said, before he threw a fire whip directly at the man. "And then she flew out the fucking nest!"

The room smelled of burning flesh as the fire whip got the doctor's arm. "My apologies, my Lord."

The doctor didn't seem to know anything. "Get out of here!"

The man ran to tend to his wound.

Ozai called for Lo and Li, but they split as soon as they got Azula to Ember Island. They knew once Ozai found out, he would want their heads.

"Those old hags fled." Ozai started to wonder why he had hired them in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for the reviews. They are helpful, back to the story.

**Three days later**

Zuko and Aang were practicing his firebending. He was much improved from his early days, but he was still not showing the mastery that he had with air or fire. It was arguable whether or not his firebending was on par with his earthbending.

"You still don't focus well enough," Azula snapped at him.

"What?" Aang turned to her.

"And now, you just turned your back on the enemy. That's how I shot you last time."

Katara was about to yell at her for mentioning that when Azula said, "You need to remember who is behind you at all times. When you turn to me, step back so you can still see Zuko. My father rarely fights his own fights alone. You have to be ready for a second party who might try to ambush you."

She started correcting his form and instructing him on how to move around a ring. "Can you see with your feet too?"

"What?"

"Take off your shoes."

Aang frowned in confusion, but he did it anyway.

"You can use your earthbending to keep an eye on what's behind you while you fight. You need to develop every advantage that you can."

Azula ended up taking over Aang's training for the day.

Zuko was fine with taking a step back.

Azula was called the prodigy for a reason. "No!" She said "No" to him often, but as the day went on, she started to say "better" and "do that again."

* * *

Meanwhile, Ty Lee was trying to get to know their new group. "So what was it like living in the tribe," she asked Katara.

The waterbender was wary of Azula's friends. It was hard not to be weary of three girls who almost killed you, numerous times, who seemed to have joined Zuko, who was also questionable, on a whim.

Ty Lee seemed nice, bubbly. She probably would seem trustworthy if she hadn't made Katara's arm a limp noodle that one time.

"It's like a big family. Everyone knows each other and we were all pretty close. We're smaller than the Northern Water Tribe."

"How come you're not a princess?" Ty Lee asked her.

"What?"

"Your father's a chief, and Yue was a princess."

Katara shrugged. "We just don't have any titles other than Dad's."

Titles were such a big deal in the Fire Nation. As soon as Ty Lee's father found out Azula would be in her class, he ordered Ty Lee to become friends with her.

"Everyone cares about titles in the Fire Nation, whether they are royals, nobles, or military."

"Why did you come here?"

"Azula did, so I followed her."

"That's it?"

Ty Lee shrugged. "Well, I was in the circus before she recruited me to help arrest her brother and then well, I figured if she left Ozai, I might as well too. There wasn't any other reason for me to stay, and he's probably burning everyone he thinks helped her get away."

That sounds horrible. "Like?"

"Probably the royal doctor and maybe Lo and Li if they didn't flee in time."

"He sounds horrid."

"Well his is, but it's not like Zuko and Azula picked their parents. No one would have picked Ozai for a father."

Katara furrowed her brow. She never thought about that. Katara wouldn't pick any other parents if she had all of the parents to pick from. She got the luck of the draw. They didn't.

* * *

Mai was throwing knives at her target, which had been Momo before Aang complained about animal abuse. The lemur monkey always dodged them well enough, so she figured she was training him for free, but the monk disagreed.

Suki approached her, trying to make conversation. "Does your family know you're with us now?"

"Seeing as my uncle is the warden, yes." Mai always had the same blank expression on her face.

Suki laughed. "I guess that was a stupid question."

"That's alright. We all ask stupid questions sometimes."

Suki wondered if Mai said that to make her feel better or worse. "Have you thought about what you want to do after the war?"

"First, I want to survive to see the end. Then, I'll have to think about it."

Suki wondered why she didn't try talking to Ty Lee first; she seemed the most normal out of the trio.

* * *

That night, Azula had trouble sleeping. Her sleeping schedule had been off since she started showing symptoms of pregnancy, but it was even worse without a bed. She got out of her tent, well the tent she was sharing with Ty Lee and went to the campfire.

Aang was still sitting in front of it. "Couldn't sleep either?"

"Nope."

They sat in front of the embers, neither of them saying anything for a while

"Does he know?" Aang eventually asked her.

Azula knew what he meant. "No, he doesn't."

"Shouldn't he?"

"Why, so he can say he didn't sign up for this and take off?"

"What if he wants to be a Dad?"

"I doubt it and even if he did, no man would choose me to mother his child."

Aang wanted to disagree, but he couldn't say he would ever pick her to be a mother. "He must have liked you somewhat?" Aang offered.

"He liked me enough for one night of fun."

"Maybe you could send him a letter?"

Azula looked down at the ground, "I don't know where to find him."

Aang hadn't thought about that problem. He didn't say anything else about it.

Eventually, Azula went back to her tent. She wondered if she should try to find him. She quickly decided against it. "I'll only earn him Ozai's wrath. There's no reason to get him killed over my carelessness."

It seemed like it should be easy for Azula to hate her baby. It caused this mess for her, but for some reason, she couldn't blame the little bugger. If anything, she thought being born to her was punishing him. She didn't know what the spirits thought he did to deserve it, but hopefully this would make him stronger if he lived to be born.

* * *

Despite the lack of sleep, Azula woke up at sunrise. She did her meditation and greeted Agni before she started training.

Zuko was the next to rise. He never would have guessed she was pregnant if Aang hadn't told him. In hindsight, the vomiting was probably morning sickness, but who would expect Azula to get pregnant.

Honestly, it sounds like something Ty Lee would do. She had run away from home to do Agni knows what. It would not have been a surprise at all to see her come home with a baby, but this was almost unbelievable.

Zuko wanted to find this guy and punch him, but chances are, he didn't even know about the baby. If Azula wouldn't tell anyone who the father is, Zuko had to assume she hadn't told him.

There was once a time when Zuko and Azula were really close. He was her big brother. He was supposed to protect her. Ozai made sure those days were short lived, pitting them against each other at an early age. Zuko wondered what would have happened if they had a different dad.

He waited for Aang to wake up before he started training. Already, the Avatar was thinking more quickly and more aware of his surroundings. He and Zuko battled for a good part of the morning.

"You're much improved," Zuko told him as they finished the round.

"Thanks. Yesterday was rough."

"Well, Azula's a perfectionist."

"I can see that."

Every move and every strike she did was flawless. How did she get pregnant? Both boys wondered as they watched her train solo. It seemed so unlike her.

* * *

Ty Lee and Mai were up now, and they were training together.

The assassin threw knives at her friend who twisted and turned to miss them. No matter how quick Mai was, Ty Lee was always a bit quicker. The girl was spacy and often acted like an airhead, but she had her own depth of knowledge that was second to none.

When they were done practicing, they went to get breakfast. Seeing none, they started to make it.

"Are you hungry Azula?"

The Princess had been lost in thought before Ty Lee interrupted.

"What?"

"Food," Mai said.

"Oh thanks. Do they have any fruit?"

Mai threw an apple at her.

"Shouldn't she be eating more?" Ty Lee questioned.

"I think the goal is to get her to keep food down right now," Mai answered.

* * *

The rest of Team Avatar woke up to see their Fire Nation comrades already done with their training for the day.

"What time did you get up?" Katara asked sleepily.

"A couple of hours ago," Ty Lee said. "The others were already up."

"I prefer the night time."

"Most waterbenders do," Mai commented. "We're more of a sun-loving people."

People? Katara had usually considered Fire Nation to be creatures that go bump in the night.

* * *

The two groups remained segregated by sleeping habits, which meant Aang trained with fire in the mornings and earth and water in the afternoons and evenings.

"I'm tired," Aang fussed at Toph when it was time for his afternoon earthbending session.

"You're tired. Will Ozai care if you're tired, Twinkle Toes? I think not." She launched a boulder at him. This was often how their training sessions went.

After the next few days, Aang was looking forward to having a morning off.

Unfortunately, they saw red balloons almost at the temple and his morning off was no more.

"That's not a good sign," Azula said to the group.

They scrambled to pack their bags and get going, but the soldiers launched explosives at them using ballistas before they reached the temple. They then jumped off the balloons with jiis, and team Avatar knew it was in trouble.

Azula threw up a fire wall to buy some time. Haru made a tunnel to escape, but Appa refused to use it. The earthbender guided the people closest to him while everyone else had to jump on Appa.

Azula struggled to get on Appa. She woke up this morning not feeling so great and didn't seem to have the strength to jump. An enemy soldier charged at her with a kanabo. She tried to conjure lightening, but her mind was too muddled. Would throwing lightening hurt her baby?

Zuko grabbed her and pulled her aboard.

Appa took off, and they were gone.

The Princess was shell-shocked. She couldn't figure out why she couldn't jump, why she couldn't summon her lightening. She was helpless right now, and Zuko of all people saved her life. Her confusion made her catatonic.

Zuko clutched to her, scared that he might lose her that she might slid off Appa or something. Their relationship was so confusing. She always seemed to make his life hell, but she understood him in ways no one else did. She was like a cyanide-laced peanut butter sandwich when you might starve to death if you don't eat it.

After making sure the soldiers had lost their trail, they found a new hideout. With Aang were Katara, Sokka, Ty Lee, Zuko and Azula.

* * *

Suki and the others (Hakoda, Bato, Mai, and Teo) were with Haru.

"What about the others," Ty Lee asked.

"Mai's very resourceful," Azula said. "She'll find a way to get them to the Earth Kingdom." At least she still had her shit together, unlike the princess.

Azula was right. Mai was able to get ahold of her cousins, and they procured her a sky ship.

"I love my cousin Meng!" Mai said as the ship came to them a few days later.

"Are all of the girls in your family given names that start with M?" Suki asked.

Mai frowned. "No, however everyone in Ty Lee's family has a name that starts with the letter T."

"Are you being sarcastic?" Suki questioned.

"No. Ty Lee has six sisters, Talia, Ta Mina, Ty Laura, Tina, Torra, and Tulip."

Suki made a face. "Why?" That sounded really hard to keep straight.

Mai shrugged. "Her mother is crazy."

"She has six sisters?" Haru questioned.

"And they all look alike."

"So they're all hot?" Haru laughed.

Mai rolled her eyes. Boys are such simpletons!

* * *

Ozai did not take to failure well. Not only did Azula escape, but also, they didn't capture or even wound anyone.

"We won't fail again, my Lord."

"See that you don't." They would not get a third chance.

* * *

Zuko was talking to Ty Lee. "Has Azula said anything to you about the father?"

"She won't say who he is or when it happened."

"Was she (raped)?"

"She says she wasn't."

"Do you believe her?"

"I don't know." If she had been, she wouldn't tell anyone. It would be admitting weakness.

Zuko knew something was really wrong with her, other than being pregnant, but he couldn't figure out what it is. She was so quiet and withdrawn. She didn't seem like herself at all.

No one else knew how to read her either. Zuko tried the others for advice. Sokka said, "maybe she'll talk to you when she's ready," which sounded like it would be never.

Aang suggested that it might be hard for her to have to turn against her father. "You said they were always close and knowing that he's trying to kill her is probably upsetting."

Zuko wondered fi that was it. He hadn't had an easy time deciding what to do, and Azula didn't really decide; she just got pregnant.

Zuko tried talking to her by the campfire tonight.

"Do you miss Ozai?" he asked her.

"What?"

"You've seemed gloomy lately, and I was wondering it it was because you missed him."

Azula didn't miss him at all, but she was gloomy. "There's so much uncertainty now. Before it was simple, win the war, conquer the world, and pass it down to the next generation. Now I don't know what's going to happen to me or my country or my child. I'm not use to having a muddled path. It's not exactly comforting."

"I know. It's why I didn't join Uncle in Ba Sing Se. Your offer was clear. Go home, be the Crown Prince again, but I spent three years watching how our military treated people under Ozai's direction. It wasn't right."

"If Ozai knows how to do anything, it's be brutish and punish those who disobey." Azula never considered it wrong before, unpleasant obviously, but it was just how things were."

"Yeah, and for a long time, I didn't know anything else."

"Do you think our country will accept us after the war? We're about to undo 100 years of work."

"That's the thing. I think the work we did was for the royal family and the nobles. I don't think the average Fire Nation citizen benefited from it. I think the people will welcome peace."

"I hope your right."

Over the next few days, Azula was starting to come to peace with her decision to leave. It was too late to go back and beg Ozai's forgiveness, so she had to move forward. Even if the odds were against her, she had a shot at making this work. She had to give it everything. She would likely only get one shot.

* * *

The other group was taking the sky ship to Ba Sign Se. There were plenty of small towns they could hide in outside the wall until they could come up with a plan to overthrow the Fire Nation.

Suki was in charge of reading the maps. "We're need to go west," she called out.

"Stop over there," Mai instructed, which was the opposite of what Suki said.

Confused, Hakoda slowed down the ship. "What are we doing?"

"Those people over there, I want to talk to them."

There was a group of men hiking in the distance.

Hakoda brought the ship down and Mai got off.

Bato wondered, "Should one of us go with her? They might be dangerous."

Haru looked with his binoculars. "She seems fine."

Mai was doing most of the talking. The men followed her back to the ship.

"We have new allies," Mai told them.

"Is that?" Haru started to question.

"That's right. We have the Dai Li." When Mai first saw them, she could tell they were officers based on their formation, but they clearly weren't Fire Nation. She was hoping they might want to team forces and when they turned out to be Azula's agents, it was perfect.

"Why are they with us?" Bato questioned.

"Because the enemy of the enemy is thy friend." Apparently, threatened their heads when they let Aang get away during the invasion and when Azula fled, they did too, not wanting to be accused of letting her get away too. It was pretty easy to get them to join. They needed Azula's side to win, whatever side that was. She had been the only ally they had up until now.

The agents were quiet. They didn't seem to have distinct personalities. They just formed this one unit.

It was ironic that they would be on a team with the leader of the Kyoshi warriors, especially since they helped overthrow the city Suki had been trying to save. Neither of them commented on the bizarre situation.

"Do you ever take off the masks?" Haru questioned.

They shook their heads, all with the same cadence.

"Food rations will run faster," Hakoda mentioned.

"Good thing they came with money," Mai retorted.

"Well we could always use more of that," Bato muttered.

Mai had been the only one with any money, which meant she controlled how it was spent. Bato wasn't sure how she became the leader of the group, but it seemed undeniable now.

He just hoped they made it to Ba Sing Se in one piece.

The other group was mostly getting along, other than Azula and Katara. The two girls were both opinionated and bossy, and if Azula didn't like something, she'd let you know it.

"Oh that smells awful," Azula said of Katara's stew.

"How rude!"

"Sorry if I offended your peasantry palate, but that is an abomination." Azula was sure this went beyond her pregnancy-related sensitivities. She thought Katara's cooking was possibly lethal.

"Why don't you cook?"

Azula laughed. "You think I would cook for a group of misfits and peasants?'

"If we're such misfits, why are you here?"

"Well, I was going to steal Zuko's war balloon, but Sokka was already trying to escape, and it seemed easier to join him than to race him to the balloon."

"IT SEEMED EASIER!"

"Well yeah. Pregnancy makes me tired. In my prime, I just would have stolen the balloon."

Katara couldn't believe her coldness. "Don't you feel bad for what you've done?"

Azula pursed her lips. "What did I do?"

"Well first of all, you killed Aang."

"He's right there, try again."

"You shot him with lightening!"

"Because he turned his back to his opponent. If I had turned my back on you, would you have waited for me to turn around before attacking?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"I can't throw lightening."

"If you could, wouldn't you have thrown it at me? I can't freeze people to stuff or merge with spirits and drown hundreds of soldiers. What I knew about Aang was that he was capable of turning into a giant and killing hundreds with one blow. I wasn't going to take any chances."

Her lack of repentance was disturbing.

* * *

Later, Katara was complaining to Toph about Azula's abrasiveness. Toph, however, seemed to understand the Princess, well she understood, "she must be scared senseless."

"What?" Katara said to her.

"She's fourteen and pregnant. Who knows where the father is? Even if she does make it out without any prison time, she's going to basically be ostracized from the only world she knows." Toph grew up with nobles; she knew how they dealt with unmarried pregnant women. Azula would be lucky to be sent away for several months and to have her baby clandestinely adopted.

Azula made fewer snide remarks, but she was a stray dog hiding in an alleyway.

Katara never thought she'd be afraid of anything. The girl seemed to epitomize fearless just a couple of months before. She tried to reach out to the difficult firebender.

"Did you want to be a mother?" she asked.

"Not like this. I thought I would have been married or at least Fire Lord first. Now I'm just a 14 year old with a bastard prince or princess inside me."

"But you still have your family?"

Azula scoffed. "My brother's scared of me, my uncle hates me and my father is trying to kill me. I'm going to be all alone on this." She couldn't imagine Mai and Ty Lee sticking around for too long. Their fearless leader was gone.

"You don't know that. Maybe the father will come for you."

He doesn't know who I am. "I doubt it."

"Was he your boyfriend?"

Azula frowned. "He was a guy I met at a party."

Katara was shocked.

"Yeah, that's right. I'm the Crown Princess, and I had a party baby. This should have been Ty Lee. Who knows how many times she didn't use protection?"

"Maybe the spirits wanted it this way."

"Why?"

"If you hadn't gotten pregnant, you wouldn't be here. Maybe you need this baby too."

Azula refused to believe the water peasant, but maybe she was on to something. Azula envisioned her life if she hadn't gotten pregnant.

She would have been punished when Zuko defected. She would have been angry with him when Ozai had sent her to kill him. She would have gone to Boiling Rock to take him out, which would have cost her Mai's friendship. Who knows what Ty Lee would do? It sounded like everything would have gone to hell. "Even if I did get the crown, I'd be all alone anyway." At least now she had someone, even if it was only until the winter.


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Katara had trouble sleeping. Talking to Azula about her pregnancy triggered something. The waterbender really missed her mother. She thought the campfire would have been out, but Zuko was sitting there.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

"I just don't know how everything changed so quickly." One day he was banished, the next he came home. He left but before he could rescue Iroh, his uncle broke out of jail. Azula was pregnant and had now joined him. "It doesn't feel like this is my life anymore."

"I know. It seems that every day is a new revelation."

He hadn't told Azula what Ozai told him about their mother. He wasn't sure how she'd take the news. "I miss my mother," he said.

"Is she deceased?"

"I hope not. My father banished her almost six years ago. I haven't seen her since."

"Why would he do that?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

Katara nodded.

"Iroh was supposed to be Fire Lord when Azulon died. He had a son, Lu Ten, who was next in line for the throne. Lu Ten died during the siege of Ba Sing Se and Iroh was so depressed that he pulled back the invasion.

My father wanted to be declared the heir since Iroh had no other children. Azulon thought he was being callous and said if you want the throne, then lose your son too.

Azula was eavesdropping. She told me that dad was going to kill me. I thought she was lying, but Dad had a knife. To stop him, my mother killed Azulon, while my father had an alibi. He forged a will to become Fire Lord and banished my mother so she couldn't tell anyone what she did. I have no idea where she is or what happened to her afterwards."

How horrid. "I hope you find her," she offered.

Zuko realized Katara never said anything about her mother, neither did Sokka. "What happened to your mother?"

Katara frowned. "She was murdered during the Southern Raids."

Zuko's face fell. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not like you killed her."

"No, but my grandfather may as well have." He controlled most of the war.

"I never understood why they targeted her. She wasn't a bender and couldn't fight for anything."

"Maybe they made a mistake. They likely had a set number of benders they were looking for."

"They were probably looking for me," Katara said solemnly. Kya had sent Katara out of the room. Maybe she did that on purpose.

The conversation only managed to depress both of them. Sleep came no easier as they both tried for a second time.

While Katara lied in her sleeping bag, she tried to think of something peaceful, but nothing could keep her attention from her mother.

Zuko knew that Ozai would get what was coming to him in the end. It was only fair that Katara get to confront the guy who killed her mother too.

* * *

In the morning, Zuko felt determined to do something about it. He started to pack.

"What are you doing?" Azula questioned when she saw her brother packing a bag. He can't be running away again! This was the best shot they had at survival.

"I'm going to find the scumbag who killed Katara's mother."

"And do what?"

"Make him pay."

Azula scoffed. "Do you realize how stupid that sounds? So what, you'll kill him. His son will grow up to hate you and then kill you. Your son will then try to kill his son. It won't stop." As soon as she said it, the words sounded alien. Normally, Azula would be just fine with an eye for an eye, but now, it seemed revolting. Azula blamed the hormones. Pregnancy must be making me weak and gooey sounding.

Zuko frowned. "Since when are you against violence?" Azula had to be one of the most violent people he knew and that was saying something. He grew up in a country where you settled your disputes by burning your enemy.

"Since I have a child who will probably hear horrible things about me his entire childhood. I don't want to create any more problems than I already have." Azula already feared that he would grow up to hate her once he learned of her past. She had no desire to add to the list of reasons.

Katara saw them bickering and went to see what was going on. "What are you doing?"

"Want to catch the scumbag who killed your mother?"

"YES!" Katara packed her stuff.

Azula rolled her eyes, not even trying to talk Katara out of it. They want to be vigilante idiots, let them.

"Can we borrow Appa?" Zuko questioned.

"For?"

"To catch the jerk who killed my mother," Katara said bluntly.

"I can't condone that. Seeking revenge will only encourage more violence."

"It won't bring Mom back," Sokka told her.

"So! He needs to get what's coming to him."

"I agree with Aang on this one."

"Then you didn't love Mom the way I did."

"I'll forgive you if you take him anyway," Aang said, "see forgiveness."

They left without another word.

"Even for you, that was lame," Azula told him.

Ty Lee frowned then she learned of their departure. "Mai's going to be mad." The acrobat feared that this was motivated by Zuko's crush on the waterbender.

* * *

The duo left to find the naval vessel. It took them all day, but eventually, they found it. It was pouring rain. They broke into the control room when Katara bloodbended the officer into a wall, stunning him.

"What the hell?"

Zuko yanked off his mask.

"That's not him," Katara said.

"But this is the head of the Southern Raiders."

"I just got this job," the guy cried out. "You want Yon Rha!"

They went to find him next. If she had any remorse for what she did to an (arguably) innocent man, she didn't show it.

* * *

"Do you really think Katara will kill him?" Aang asked the group.

Sokka wanted to say no, but Katara wasn't thinking straight right now. When she got angry, she had tunnel vision. "I hope not."

"If she does, she better take out the rest of his family," Azula said before she bit into her apple

That sounded horrid. "How can you say that?" Sokka retorted.

"They'll want revenge, otherwise. If she's not ready to kill them all, she should have stayed put."

"She shouldn't have gone," Sokka said.

"She shouldn't have gone? At least it was her mother. I don't know what Zuzu was thinking." Azula wouldn't have gone even if it had been her mother.

"I know what Zuko was thinking," Ty lee said.

Azula turned to her.

Ty Lee raised a brow. (He's into her body.)

"Well, that makes sense."

"She didn't say anything," Sokka said.

"We have non verbal communication."

They never explained what Ty Lee had been implying.

* * *

Later that day, Ty Lee tried to talk to her about the pregnancy, looking for any clue as to whom the father could be.

"Do you think it's going to be a firebender?"

"It could be."

"Could it maybe be a nonbender?"

"I'm not telling you anything about him." Azula said cooly

"But why? We tell each other anything."

Azula was scared to admit how it happened. "If I tell you, it will just be too real."

Ty Lee knew she wasn't going to get anything out of her today. "No matter what happened, Mai and I are here for you. Your baby's going to have the two best aunts ever!"

"Thanks," Azula said weakly. She wondered if her baby would look like his father. She hoped her baby wasn't ugly that would be really unfortunate.

* * *

Zuko and Katara got to a small town in the Fire Nation, where Yon Rha was on his way to the market.

Zuko approached him.

"Prince Zuko?"

"Did you conduct a raid on the Southern Water Tribe six years ago?"

"Yes."

"And did you kill their last waterbender?"

"Yes."

"Well, you were mistaken."

"She said she was a waterbender."

"Then she lied."

"Why would she do that?"

"To protect ME!" Katara blood bended him into the wall, starting to choke him.

Yon Rha started to panic. "Look, I'm sorry about your mother? You can kill my mother and then we're even."

Katara shook her head. What a pathetic man. She dropped him to the ground.

* * *

The duo left, not saying a word about it until they got back.

When they returned, everyone wanted to know what she did to the guy.

"I didn't kill him," Katara told them.

Aang was proud of her. "Forgiveness is a better way."

"I'll never forgive him," Katara admitted. "But I forgive you," Katara hugged Zuko, making the prince blush.

Azula and Ty Lee looked at each other. Oh crap!

Later that night, they discussed the possible love triangle.

* * *

"You don't think he's going to cheat on Mai with Katara do you?" Azula questioned Ty Lee.

Ty Lee wanted to say no, but that boy was so damn impulsive. "Maybe it's just a little crush. Not every crush turns into something."

"I suppose so. If Katara's not actually into him, then it would go nowhere."

"Exactly."

"Have you ever had a crush that went nowhere?" Azula asked her.

"I had one."

"What was the problem?"

"I don't think she realized how I felt about her. By the time I had the courage to say anything, I realized too much time had passed. We had missed our moment."

"Is that how it works? Do people only get one moment?"

"If it's right, I think you'll get a second one, but for me, it just wasn't in the cards."

"Well, whomever she was, if she didn't get it, then she was a dolt."

Ty Lee laughed. Azula just called herself a dolt. "I guess she was."

* * *

The next day, Azula wanted to get the group focused on the task at hand. "Now that this revenge plot is over, when are you going to confront Ozai?"

Aang shrugged. "I decided not to fight him until after the Comet."

"WHAT!" Azula and Zuko yelled at him.

"You can't do that," Zuko told him.

"Why not?"

"Dad's going to burn down the Earth Kingdom," Azula told him.

"All of it?"

"Every city that won't surrender. If you don't stop him before the comet arrives, there won't be a world to save." Zuko cautioned.

"When were you going to tell us?" Katara snapped at them.

"No one told us you weren't going to fight him sooner," Azula yelled back.

As the royal siblings argued with Katara over who should have told whom what, Aang started to panic. They needed to plan and quickly.

* * *

The search for Azula continued. Ozai had made it perfectly clear that they needed to bring back the Princess alive, so he could deal with her treason personally. Zuko could come back dead or alive, and Iroh was to be left dead wherever he got taken down.

Soldiers ransacked Mai's family home. Her father was baffled when they showed up, just to see they had an arrest warrant for his daughter for treason.

He took his family to a neighbor's house, so they would be out of the way. In the home, there was no sign of Azula.

"She hasn't been here at all," Mai's father insisted.

They also searched Ty Lee's family home, but there was no sign of her there either. With six teenage girls in the home, it was quite a hassle trying to search it. Girls were fussing about their privacy. They had all kinds of goodies, liquor, cannabis, and sex toys, hidden from their parents in the bedroom. They did not want the military going through all of it.

The military didn't want to either, especially when it came to touching certain items.

"I wish I had two sets of gloves right now," one soldier commented as he rummaged through a "sex drawer."

After that was a bust, they tried neighbors of Mai and Ty Lee, but no one had seen any of the girls in quite some time.

Another squadron searched Ember Island, but there were no clues there either.

One officer managed to find out that Azula had been at Chan's party the month before. A squadron showed up to the house to see it ruined.

"What happened here?" The chandelier was gone. The walls were ruined, and the furniture was broken. There were burn marks everywhere.

"It looks like a dragon gave birth in this room."

They went to Chan's permanent resident where he complained, "Those crazy bitches ruined my father's summer house. He's going to kill me when he gets back."

"Have you seen them since?"

"HELL NO!"

They also tracked down Ruon Jian and the other partygoers, but there were no clues.

No one wanted to face Ozai and say he failed, but if they all failed, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to confront him together. The leaders of the different search parties returned to the palace to report to their sovereign.

"We tried her friends' homes." They turned them inside out. "We also searched the neighbors' homes." No one had seen the Princess or her friends.

Another group of men appeared. "We also searched Ember Island and tried all of her allies in the city, my Lord."

Ozai frowned. "What did I say about failure?"

He threw two bolts of lightening, killing the leader of each group, before he appointed new leaders. The message was clear. If you don't capture Azula, don't bother to return to him.

The groups went back out, hoping that they got lucky, or else, they were going to need to run away.

(Trigger Warning)

The hostile ruler went to bed with a concubine. She was of mixed blood (Water Tribe and Fire Nation) and was maybe 14 years old. She likely had no choice in being a concubine or taking this assignment.

"What's your name?"

"Kylie."

"Well tonight, your name is Ursa."

"Yes my Lord."

"Now take off your clothes, Ursa." His voice oozed of venom as he said it.

She timidly started to undo the buttons on her dress. She was taking too long, so Ozai burned it off her, leaving her wearing nothing but ash.

"What kind of whore has an outfit she can't take off?"

"I was nervous my Lord."

"Do I scare you?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"GOOD!"

He quickly got his clothes off and roughly pulled her on the bed.

He wasn't her first client, and many of them weren't nice, but none of them were as fearsome as Ozai. She opened her legs and lied there, trying to stay quiet until it was over. Usually, that's what the men wanted.

Ozai, however, slapped her hard across the face. "I like it when you cry, Ursa." He said as she whimpered.

He got off on the pain of others. Kylie was about to find out the hard way.

When he was done, he left her bruised and beaten in the hallway, not even a sheet to cover herself.

A servant found the poor girl and wrapped her in a towel he took from the linen closet. He carried her to the doctor who had yet another of Ozai's victims to patch up.

The doctor had once been excited to take this job. He had no idea Azulon would die less than two years later. Even in Azulon's tenure, Ozai had his victims, but now, it was so much worse.

* * *

When Kylie came too, she was wearing clothes she didn't recognize and was in a strange room.

"What is this?"

"The infirmary."

Kylie had never been able to afford medical care before. She had never been in an infirmary. "Am I going to die?"

"No. You have some deep bruises, but none of them are fatal."

Kylie wished she could just run away. "Do his girls usually wake up in the hospital?"

"The last one didn't wake up at all," the doctor told her.

She was the night that Azula had left to join her brother.

Kylie started to sob.

The doctor could just kick himself for what he was about to do. He took out his royal travel pass. It allowed him to enter and leave the Fire Nation as he wished, no other identification needed. He didn't even need a ticket.

"Take this, and when you can, get to the docks. You can get on any boat out of the country with this."

The girl was so shocked that she was about to cry. "Why are you helping me?"

"I had to watch too many girls come here, broken, violated and some of them didn't even make it through the night. I should have done more for them. I don't want to have to say that about you too."

She hugged him, even though it hurt to walk much less hug. She hid the pass. She had a way out, even if the odds seemed slim. She had hope, which is something she had forgotten about years ago.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next few days, everyone trained Aang as hard as they could. Azula said to him, "Do you know how to throw lightening?"

"No."

"I should teach you."

"Isn't that dangerous?"

"If you get it wrong. How else will you kill Ozai?"

"I can't kill him!"

"Where are you going to put him?"

"In Jail?"

"Only the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom have jails and they would both probably sentence him to death. What's the difference between them killing him with a noose and you killing him in battle."

Aang could only say, "I wouldn't be the one to kill him."

"But he would still be dead. Even if you don't want to get your hands dirty, how will you subdue him before he kills you, stick some cuffs on him and hope he doesn't break out?"

Aang said, "There has to be a way."

"He's the only person who I'm afraid to fight," Azula told him. "If you think I was bad, he taught me everything I know about killing."

Aang cringed.

The others seemed to agree that killing Ozai was likely the only way.

* * *

Toph thought Aang could get over his fear of killing with practice. "I present, the Melon Lord!"

Azula thought it was the stupidest thing she had ever seen, but they tried it. Everyone sparred against Aang and at the end, he was supposed to kill the Melon Lord.

He made it through his matches fine, but when he got to the end, he couldn't even kill the fake Ozai.

"I can't kill him!" Aang exclaimed.

"But he's not even real," Sokka said.

"I was raised that all life is sacred."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but that line of thinking did your people no favors," Azula said, to everyone's surprise.

Aang ran off.

"Good job AZULA!" Katara yelled at her.

"What? If they hadn't been pacifists, they might have done better when Sozin attacked them. Does anyone else think them not having any weapons or fighting ability wasn't such a good thing?"

Zuko groaned. She had a point, but that wasn't going to get Aang to let go of his beliefs. "Let's wait for him to calm down and try something else."

Aang tried meditation, but his past lives were fine with Aang killing Ozai, even Yangchen. Frustrated, he went for a swim. He didn't come back.

"He ran away," Azula sighed. "We're doomed."

"He'll come back," Katara insisted.

"When? After my father destroys the world?"

* * *

Ty Lee suggested a bounty hunter. They found one named Jun who was supposed to be the best.

The shirshu couldn't find Aang. "He's gone!"

"You mean dead?" Sokka questioned.

"No, he could find him if he were dead. He's gone."

"Can you find my uncle?" Zuko had his sandal.

"You kept his nasty sandal?" Azula frowned at her brother.

They followed the shirshu and ended up in Ba Sing Se.

* * *

Bumi appeared to greet them. He noticed not everyone was there. "Aren't we missing someone? Where's Momo?"

Azula was stunned. "Is he crazy?"

"He's with Aang," Sokka said, ignoring the hostile Princess.

"Oh then I'm sure it's fine."

"Where's my uncle?" Zuko questioned.

Jeong Jeong pointed to a tent.

Zuko went to find him. "I'm so sorry," he said.

Iroh just hugged him. "I'm just glad you found your way."

"But I turned on you."

"But you came back, and you won't let your sister get in your head again."

"About that."

"Why does everything here smell like feet?" she complained before she puked.

Iroh cringed. "Was that?"

"Yeah, she kind of stowed away on my war balloon."

"She what?"

Iroh came out of his tent.

* * *

Azula had immolated someone's shoes. "Those produced a horrid smell." The smell of ash was much easier to handle.

"Those were my shoes," Piando whined.

"You should have replaced them months ago."

The two started arguing.

Iroh was baffled. "What's going on?"

"She set fire to my shoes."

"They smelled like death. They were worse than that nasty sandal of yours Zuko kept."

"What am I supposed to put on my feet?"

"Can't you go to your shoemaker and have a new pair made?"

"I don't have a shoemaker!"

"Oh, that's unfortunate." She did not care about his lack of footwear.

"You could at least pretend to care."

"That was me pretending to care!"

Sokka wondered, "Why is he arguing with a pregnant teenager? She can't be reasoned with, plus she's Azula!"

"Just because she's pregnant doesn't mean she can't be reasonable," Katara said.

"Are you kidding? Pregnant women are like totally bonkers."

Katara smacked him on the head. "Don't be a cow pig!"

"Ow! It's not like you're pregnant! Wait! You aren't …"

"I'm not pregnant you fool!"

Everyone turned to her.

"Oops!"

"Who's pregnant?" Jeong Jeong questioned.

Everyone looked around until eyes ended up on the Princess.

"Fine, I'm knocked up, so I ran away from Daddy. Happy!"

She stormed off angrily.

* * *

The White Lotus was shocked.

Zuko shook his head. "Now you see what I've been dealing with."

"Who's the father?" Iroh questioned.

"She won't say," Zuko said.

"What do you mean she won't say?" That's absurd.

"She won't tell anyone who he is, how she met him or what happened. Ty Lee couldn't even get it out of her."

Iroh gulped. "Who's going to raise this baby?"

Zuko shrugged. "I have no idea." Zuko couldn't picture her as a mother. Maybe the nurses could raise the baby.

Iroh wondered if it was a guard or a noblemen's son. Who would have slept with Azula?

Piando forgot about his shoes. He felt sorry for the girl. 14 and pregnant did not sound like a good time.

Ty Lee went looking for the Princess.

She found her curled up in a ball. "My life is over."

"What? You're only 14."

"And pregnant with a bastard. Who knows how many scandals and controversy those men have lived through and finding out I was pregnant, stunned them into silence." They know my life is as good as over. The realization damn near killed them.

Their facial expressions were pretty ridiculous. Ty Lee put her arm around her friend. "This doesn't have to be the end of anything."

"Yes it does. I'm going to be fat and no one's going to love me."

"I'll always love you. Even if you're too big to fit in my house."

"Thanks," Azula said sarcastically.

"So you'll gain a few pounds. You can lose them once the baby's born."

"No one's going to want a crazy teen mother and her baby."

"You're not crazy. This happens to lots of girls."

"And you know what happens to them."

"No one's sending you to a home for unwed girls. You're going to go home, where you belong, and when you have this baby, it's going to have a mother, two awesome aunts, and I bet Mai will even rope Zuko into helping."

"If she doesn't lose him to the waterbending peasant."

'There's also the staff. There are the nurses and the royal doctor and …"

"He's probably screwed because of me. I wonder if Ozai killed him."

That was a possibility. "Well, I'm sure Ozai's been mad at the doctor plenty of times over the years, and he's still standing. He knows how to get away." I hope.

"I hope your right." It would suck if he died because of her. He had always been good to her over the years. Because of Ozai, she had to see him often for treatment.

* * *

Ozai was preparing for Sozin's Comet. "When the war is over, I will be declared Phoenix King."

"Yes my Lord." The Head Sage was terrified of him. Ozai was crazy.

"The first thing I will do is capture my traitorous children and they will be severely punished."

Your men couldn't find them before. Why will they be able to find them now? "Of course."

"I need an heir," Ozai said to him.

"Yes my Lord."

"I want you to go through the noble families and find the strongest firebending bloodlines. Then I want you to find a bitch from the family that I can take as a wife."

"Yes my Lord."

He left, hoping to Agni that Ozai failed somehow. It was bad enough seeing the way he treated Ursa over the years and his children. It would be tragic to repeat the cycle with another unsuspecting woman and new children.

Aang woke up and realized he was moving. Baffled, he got up and looked around him. He was somewhere he had never been before. He looked down and eventually realized "I'm on a lion turtle." He jumped into the water and asked the creature for help.

The lion turtle explained energybending to him.

"Thanks a lot!" He now had a plan.

He looked ahead. There were the sky ships, and there was Ozai.

Azula peered off the ship they had. "I see a bald skinny boy. We might not die after all!"

"You're such an optimist," Katara said.

"Well, who knows about you?" Azula had been talking about herself and her baby.

Toph snickered. "Let's go, Mama Lord!"

Azula didn't even dignify that nickname with a response.

Sokka turned the ship into the enemy battleships. "I hope this works."

They crashed into the first two ships, causing them to fall.

Azula realized if they kept doing this, they would sink themselves. The ship could only handle so much damage. They had to do something else.

"Everyone, back up!" she hollered. She took a deep breath and sent azure flames at the enemy, trying to set their ships on fire from a distance.

The comet enhanced her bending, allowing her flames to grow like waves as they descended upon the enemy ships.

"She looks like a volcano," Sokka said in awe of her firepower.

The soldiers were in a state of confusion. Why was their Princess attacking their ships? Some of the last ships turned around, going home to escape what was certainly death.

The others either couldn't turn around or they wouldn't.

The war would cost them their lives. Another generation of military men would be gone.

* * *

Iroh and Zuko were helping to take back Ba Sing Se. "Should Azula be fighting in the air?" Zuko questioned.

"She said she wanted to go," I.e. she didn't want to stay with her family.

"Maybe we should have tried harder to convince her to stay on the ground."

"Why?"

"She's pregnant!"

"Oh right. Well, I'm sure she knows what she's doing." Iroh wasn't too concerned about his troublesome niece.

Zuko wasn't sure of that at all. "She couldn't create lightening."

"What?"

"She tried to and she froze up. Something's wrong with her."

Iroh shrugged. "Maybe she's having a catharsis?" It sounded unlikely, but who thought she would get pregnant? Iroh had thought she was a lesbian.

Suddenly, a stiletto appeared out of nowhere, flying past Zuko's face and hitting the wall behind him. "Miss me?"

"Mai!" Zuko hugged her.

She had come with the others and with some new "friends."

"You brought the Dai Li?"

"Well, they fled from Ozai after Azula ran away, and I found them on my way here."

The Dai Li knew the Fire Nation's security formation and started to set a diversion to draw the soldiers away from the White Lotus.

Mai had fun commanding them. "I must say, Azula kept them well whipped!"

Zuko snorted. "She would have a bunch of men at her beck and call."

"Can I keep them?" Mai questioned. They were fun.

"You can fight her for them."

"She abandoned them. I'll win!"

Zuko wasn't getting in the middle of that argument.

Ozai had jumped onto the cliff. His fight with Aang was on.

Ozai's plan was to overpower him with this flame, sending whips and fire blasts repeatedly until he broke down.

To his surprise, the boy moved quickly and deliberately, evading or blocking each attack while keeping himself in a position to counterstrike. Clearly Azula had trained him.

"So I see my traitorous daughter helped you out. Why isn't she here herself? Is she afraid of Daddy?"

Aang realized he could get an advantage. "She could have fought you, but she thought it would be bad for the baby."

"THE WHAT?"

Aang launched a boulder at him, while he was in shock. "She didn't tell you. You're going to be a grandfather."'

Ozai found himself pinned to the ground by this stupid boulder.

Aang used the distraction to trap Ozai in the rock, binding his hands and feet.

While Ozai struggled to get free, Aang went into the Avatar state.

"You and your forefathers have committed countless crimes against humanity. You will pay the ultimate price." With a hand on Ozai's head and the other hand on his chest, Aang took his bending.

"Did you make it up? Am I going to be a grandfather?"

"You are," Aang told him. "Too bad you won't get to meet him."

* * *

With the battle ships torched and Ozai incapacitated, it was all up to the White Lotus to get Ba Sing Se back.

Mai and Zuko went into the dungeon to get Kuei out of jail. They passed Long Feng on the way.

"Let me guess, you came to kill me."

"You're not that important," Mai told him before they kept walking. They found the King. He had been in jail for two months. Only his servants came to visit him.

"I'm sorry about turning on you before," Zuko said as Mai picked the lock on the door.

"Yeah me too," Mai said quickly. "But we should talk about that later. Right now, we should get out, quickly."

They hurried the King out of the dungeon and hid him from the soldiers who were on patrol.

"Want to knock out some Fire Nation troops?" Mai asked her boyfriend.

"Sounds like fun."

They left the King while they went to go fight.

Kuei was baffled. "Why did Azula's friend and brother come to get me?" They never really explained what was happening. He hated being out of the loop. Even though he was the King, no one felt the need to tell him anything.

"When this is all over, I'm going to take charge for real. They'll see that Tyrin Kuei is no pushover."

The Fire Nation soldiers reacted when they saw the Dai Li emerge at the far wall. They thought Azula might be with them and they charged. This allowed the White Lotus to come in unobserved.

Iroh led the charge as they infiltrated the city. He and Jeong Jeong fought with their flames. They had only read of the potential for Sozin' Comet and Iroh was overwhelmed by how powerful his firebending was today. It was a good thing this only happened once every 100 years. The power was intoxicating.

Piando and Bumi on the other hand, had to fight enhanced benders. The sword master was too disciplined to show concern or fear. Bumi looked forward to kicking their asses on their strongest day. He knocked over the men with boulders, making them look like they were rag dolls as they sprawled on the ground.

Hakoda and Bato fought alongside Suki. For the Kyoshi Warrior, this was about redemption. Her confidence plummeted when Azula defeated them and she woke up in jail. This time, no one was taking her down.

Hakoda found her grit both impressive and a bit problematic. Sometimes, she left herself too exposed while she was attacking. The Chief stayed back to defend her blind side.

If this fight wasn't so serious, Bato would have found the whole thing comedic. There's Hakoda, acting like every teenage girl is his daughter. The next thing you know, he'll try to adopt that pregnant princess. Oh don't think that Bato. He might actually try to do it.

By the end of the day, Ba Sing Se was free, and the Fire Nation troops either withdrew, were knocked out or dead.

Team Avatar came back to the palace. Aang and Toph went to restore Kuei to his throne.

"What happened today?" King asked them.

Lots of things, Toph thought to herself.

Aang gave a more specific answer. "Ozai planned to burn down any city that wouldn't surrender. While I fought him, the others destroyed his battle ships."

"The others?"

"Mostly Azula," Toph said. "Sokka had rammed the first two ships, but she thought we'd crash if we kept doing that so she went all crazy fire on them and torched them instead."

"Azula turned on her father?" that explained why Zuko and Mai came to get him out of jail.

"She defected a month ago."

"Interesting." Kuei had thought a lot about her since she had taken his throne. It was hard to forget such a beautiful girl, especially one with her charisma!

* * *

There was a giant feast that night, food and drink galore. Everyone was ready to celebrate. Everyone except one upset Princess.

"I don't want to go to dinner," Azula told Ty Lee.

"But you barely ate all day, and you're eating for two now."

Like I needed reminding. "I'm not exactly in a festive mood right now. I'll just bring everyone else down."

Since when do you worry about bringing others down? Ty Lee thought to herself.

The stubborn princess refused to go.

The others sat down around the table. Toph was the first to say, "where's the princess?" She had a very consistent way of walking. It was evident to the earthbender that she never came into the room.

"She wasn't hungry," Ty Lee said.

Piando assumed that something was wrong. Pregnant women are always hungry. He suggested to Iroh that he try to talk to her.

"Why?"

"She's probably upset about something. What pregnant woman doesn't eat all day and then skips dinner."

Iroh shrugged. "I don't think she'd want to talk to me about it, whatever it is."

Piando didn't know her at all. He didn't think talking to her would be very effective.

The food was splendid. They started with a mixed green salad and then acorn squash soup and for the main event, they had stuffed chicken, sausages, fried tofu, roasted veggies, stir-fried noodles and egg tarts,

Dishes went around the table family style and Sokka was very happy about the "MEAT!" Luckily, they had multiple trays of chicken and sausage or else not everyone would have gotten some after Sokka's meat pile.

Everyone was talking about his or her highlight of the day.

"When Aang took Ozai's bending that was the coolest part of the day," Katara said.

"I'm not sure," Sokka said. "Not that his turning into a blue giant isn't always awesome, but Azula basically turned into an erupting volcano. That was insane."

"I'm really glad she defected," Aang said. "If she had been fighting with Ozai, I'd be dead."

"How come Ozai sucked so much today?" Katara questioned. "He couldn't do half of what Azula did."

"She's a better bender," Zuko said. "He's more brutal, but when it comes to raw talent, she's second to none."

"He was also distracted," Aang said. "I might have given him some news that took him by surprise."

Except for Kuei and his men, everyone knew what he was talking about.


	5. Chapter 5

After the dinner, Mai had a tray of food for the Princess. Hopefully, she could get her to eat it. She found Azula sitting alone on a balcony while everyone else was drinking away.

"I got your favorite foods." Mai had a bowl of cherries, spicy chicken and rice and vegetable tempura.

"Thanks."

Azula started on the cherries first. The pits were already cut out. Good.

"Did you want to talk?"

At first, Azula said nothing. Mai was about to turn to leave when she said, "Do you think I'm a monster?"

Mai blinked. "No. Should I?"

There were seven battle ships. Five of them went down. There were about 15 men on each ship. "I killed almost fifty people today." What kind of mother takes 45 sons out of the world?

"They weren't innocent men. They were going to burn down the Earth Kingdom."

"I shot the Avatar. It hardly seems fair that I get to judge who's innocent and who isn't."

"Did all of the ships go down?"

"No. Two of them turned around and went home."

"So they had a choice."

"The men didn't. Their captains would have decided for them."

"Then how are you more responsible then their captains? I'm not saying that you weren't a factor in their deaths, but you weren't the only factor. Are you more responsible than Ozai who made the orders in the first place?"

"It was my idea."

"What?"

"Before we went on vacation, Ozai was trying to figure out what to do with the cities that were in rebellion. I told him that there would always be rebellions if they thought there was a chance of winning and if he wanted to win the war, he had to crush their hope. He decided I was right and made the plan to burn down the Earth Kingdom." If I hadn't said anything, those men would still be alive.

"So you didn't actually tell him to burn down the Earth Kingdom?"

"I may as well have."

"Do you think Ty Lee's responsible for what happened today?"

"No. Why would I?"

"If she and I hadn't helped you, you wouldn't have conquered Ba Sing Se, and this conversation with your father would never have happened."

"That's kind of a stretch."

"So is your determination to blame yourself. The world has been at war for 100 years, most of it we weren't even alive for. Are we more responsible for what happened then Sozin who started it, Azulon who continued it, Iroh who supported the war most of his life, or Ozai who lead the final charge? How many people do you think died because of the people who went before you?"

Azula cringed, at least 400 airbenders, who knows how many other thousands of people. "Lots and lots of people."

"We were born in a world of war, where killing and conquering were to be celebrated. Your father started to militarize you before you went to school. You didn't choose your father or the value system he gave you, but you did make a choice not to follow it anymore.

You can if you want to hold onto all the guilt and tell yourself you're no better than your predecessors or you can realize you did what none of them were able to do. You broke away from your father and chose to save the world instead of destroying. Your son or daughter will get to grow up in a different world, a better world because of you."

It seemed too easy to blame her family. "But I liked conquering and winning battles. It was fun."

"Yeah it was, but that doesn't mean you're some horrible person. It just means you're human and flawed, like the rest of us."

"Do you think I'll be a good mother?"

"You're good at everything."

"Not when it comes to family relationships. I have a missing mother who hated me, an uncle who hates me, a father who really hates me and a brother who's scared of you."

"Zuko's not scared of you."

Azula made a face.

"He's increasingly less scared of you. If anything he's scared for you. It's going to be a lot of work having a baby without the father."

Azula looked down, "I don't know who he is."

"What?"

"The father of my baby. I don't know who he is. We met at the masquerade ball. He tried to take off my mask, but I was afraid he'd recognize me, so I suggested we keep them on, enjoy the mystery of the night.

Then I started puking, six weeks later."

Mai was not expecting that at all. No wonder she didn't try to find him. What was she going to do, run down the guest list and find out who had anonymous sex?

"You might not know his name, but there's a guest list for the masquerade ball and only nobles get invited, so it might not be that hard to find him. Maybe most of the guys were married and there are only a few choices."

"He could be married," Azula said, admittedly. It's not like she thought to ask him. She didn't see a ring on his hand, but he could have easily hid it in his pocket.

"Hopefully he isn't."

"Can you not tell anyone? This is pretty embarrassing."

"Your secret's safe with me." Mai just needed a way of getting the guest list to that party.

Mai went to rejoin the others.

"How is she doing?" Ty Lee asked her.

"I got her to eat. It's a start."

* * *

Everyone else kept drinking and chatting. The "kids" and the old guys had formed two different groups. Kuei didn't really fit in either. He was 25, which made him older than the kids, but he was more than 2 decades younger than the youngest White Lotus member.

Jeong Jeong noticed him sitting by himself. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

"Today, I woke up and I thought it'd be like any other day, sit in my cell, wait for my servants to bring me some food. Before I know it, the war is over. I'm going to have to be a king, a real one, not a puppet for the Council of Five or Long Feng. I don't know where to start."

"You're not alone. For everyone, tomorrow's going to be a day that feels surreal. For most of us, war is all we've ever known. Only Bumi and Aang lived before the war and remember what it's like. We're all going to have to find a new normal and learning how to govern is going to be apart of that for you."

"What was your life like before the Avatar came back?"

"I was a General in the military. It's what my father did and my grandfather did. I didn't question it at first, but once I got deployed to the Earth Kingdom, I started to realize that the world didn't see us the way we saw ourselves. We were told we would be helping people, but the women and children were terrified of us. The men tried to kill us if they could get a strike in. I started to wonder if we were wrong for showing up, instead of them being wrong for not letting us take over.

Eventually, I took off, got called the Deserter. I had to find my own path, and I ended up meeting other people who thought that there had to be something more to life than fighting, that the arts and sciences of the world should belong to everyone. I became apart of the (once secret) White Lotus."

"I can barely earthbend," Kuei admitted. "My advisors said it was not for nobles, it was for the people who worked for nobles."

"Well, learning to earthbend is a place to start. You'll understand your people more if you learn to look through their eyes."

Kuei nodded. He had so much to learn. There was no time like the present. He went to his library and started reading about his kingdom. He chastised himself for not doing this while he was in the cell. Instead, he had read for fun.

The librarian handed him a book. "History and Politics of the Earth Kingdom."

"This book is huge!"

"There are five volumes your Highness."

"Do you have a condensed version?"

The librarian smirked and handed him a small paperback called To Be a King. "It's fiction, but it portrays the Earth Kingdom fairly accurately."

Well that would have to be the start. Kuei could finish this before tomorrow.

The next morning, everyone had to get to work. Right now, the Fire Nation Crown was completely unguarded. Azula and Zuko went home to handle the domestic affairs.

"So what do we have to do?" Zuko asked his sister on the flight back.

"We need to release all of our war prisoners, start pulling back our troops and make arrangements to get everyone home."

"So we should charter some ships."

"Yes, and perhaps we should use the navy to ferry people back to their home countries."

* * *

Iroh stayed in Ba Sing Se and started discussing politics with the Earth King.

"You didn't go home with your family?" Kuei was surprised to see him.

"Zuko can handle things at the palace. Our countries are going to need to work together in this new era. I thought someone from the royal family should stay here in case we were needed for anything."

"Oh right." Kuei had just finished the war chapter in his new book. "Um, we need to exchange prisoners right?"

"We do. Zuko should release them once he gets back. From here, we can schedule meetings and figure out when we want to address various issues."

"Oh." Kuei had never really gone to any of the political meetings before. This will be interesting.

Bosco came into the room, ready for his daily walk.

"Hey Bosco. I have to work right now. Can our walk wait?"

The bear frowned.

"We can walk and talk," Iroh offered.

"Well in that case, let's go." He got Bosco's lead and they left the palace, going on a trail that went into the woods.

Iroh suggested they meet in the Fire Nation. Zuko needed to be coronated and since most of the prisoners would be released from there, the world leaders could pick up their men (or women) in Suki's case personally.

"That sounds like a good idea."

Bosco was rolling around on sticks.

"He does love sticks."

Bosco enjoyed his leisurely walks, but he had no idea how to forage for himself or actually be a bear. After about 15 minutes, he was ready to go inside. He showed Kuei his nails.

"Someone's ready for a manicure."

Iroh was puzzled by the bear that acted like a human. He also seemed to know English. How odd!

Hakoda and Suki went with the royal siblings, eager to pick up their comrades from prison.

When Azula and Zuko got to the sages, however, there was a bit of a problem.

"Zuko's the Fire Lord. He's next in line."

"But Ozai disinherited him."

"He disinherited Azula too!"

"Well, it must have been illegal for him to disinherit the last heir, therefore it's void and she's Fire Lord."

"Why not start at the beginning? Shouldn't Iroh be Fire Lord?"

"If he's Fire Lord, then everything Ozai did was illegal and we could have a legal disaster." What about taxes and everything else?

"Why does everything he did have to be illegal?"

"Making Iroh Fire Lord would only be legal if Azulon had never disinherited him," which actually is the case. "If we admit that, then everything Ozai did is illegal."

"So it has to be Zuko or Azula."

"Yes."

"But which one?"

The sages had to be unanimous.

Zuko was unsure what to do.

"If they can't agree on a Fire Lord, then we can't do anything."

Azula had an idea. "Maybe we don't need a Fire Lord yet. Ozai gave me Crown authorization, so I could handle the country when he went on vacation. I can release the prisoners myself."

She checked. Ozai never revoked the authorization.

"Let's go."

After filling out the paperwork, Azula and Zuko took Suki and Hakoda to prison so they could pick up their people.

* * *

The warriors all shared a huge hug, one that made Suki fall down.

"You're crushing me!" she complained.

"At least we all had each other. You were alone!" They felt bad for singling her out as the leader. They didn't know she'd get sent to Boiling Rock.

"I broke out," she admitted. She started to tell them about her daring escape

Hakoda's men were less huggy. They were more for putting him in a headlock and giving him noogies.

"Our leader's back!"

The men were eager to go home. They had been gone for over two years.

Back at the Palace, Azula began to schedule the withdrawls for the troops. She was going to do it in phases.

"Why not all at once?" Zuko questioned.

"It will create instability. If people see all of the soldiers vamoose at the same time, they will start looting and robbing. We need to give the local authorities a chance to resume control."

That makes sense. Zuko frowned. "How did you know all this stuff?"

"It helps when you finish school."

Zuko frowned. He got banished before he could finish.

"I didn't mean that the way it came out."

"I know, it's just, a lot has changed since I left."

"And it will change again now that we're back. We'll figure it out, even if it's not as immediate as we would like."

"Like having a baby."

"What?"

"The palace is certainly going to change, and we'll have to figure that out together."

"It's not like you're the father."

"No, but I'm going to be the coolest uncle ever."

Azula snorted. "This I can't wait to see."

The siblings continued to rib each other for the rest of the afternoon.

It was nice having a brother when their parents weren't involved.

* * *

Mai and Ty Lee were helping the Dai Li get the country in order.

"It was nice of Kuei to pardon us immediately," Ty Lee said as they helped coordinate the reconstruction. They had roads to repair and signs to replace after the overthrow of the Fire Nation.

"It was really nice of him not to make us deal with that fucking bear." Bosco was not happy to see Mai and Ty Lee again, and he let them know it. Before he could swipe at them however, Kuei made him go on time out.

"That's not how we treat our guests," Kuei told him.

"But they attacked you and kept us locked up," Bosco complained with a growl.

"I know, but we're going to start over, which means they will be nice to us and we'll be nice to them in return."

Bosco though that was bullshit, but Kuei was the king, so that's what it was. It was a good thing their leader wasn't there, or he would have gone for it.

General Fong also thought it was bullshit. "What are they doing here?"

"They stayed behind to help us rebuild the city," Kuei told him.

"They're the ones who ruined it."

"It's not like they didn't have help."

Yeah, they had that fucking princess. "Where's Azula?"

"At home."

"You let her leave?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"She's a war criminal."

"She's just a girl," Kuei said. "And it would be bad for peace negotiations if I jailed the Fire Nation's Crown Princess. This is our chance to start anew."

Where the hell did he get this happy go lucky bullshit?

Bumi went back to Omashu to take back the throne of his own city. Piando went back to his home, and Jeong Jeong now had the opportunity to set up a permanent home, now that the Fire Nation was no longer after him.

"You're a free man," Iroh told him.

"It feels so good!"

"What are you going to do now?"

"I have no idea." Maybe he would start a firebending school, not for the military. He wanted to teach a more artistic style of bending.


	6. Chapter 6

Five days after Sozin's Comet, the world leaders all met in the Fire Nation to discuss the end of the war.

It was a large table with a lot of people around it. Zuko had Iroh on one side and Azula on the other. Next to the Princess was Sokka, then it was Hakoda and Bato. Next to Bato was Katara, then Aang and then Toph. Next to Toph was Chief Arnook and one of his advisors. Next to them was General Fong, and then King Kuei. Bosco was waiting behind his king.

"You brought your bear?" Sokka questioned.

"He refused to stay home," Kuei told him. "He kept following me onto the ship."

Bosco grunted. His place was by his master. He glared at Azula who matched his stare.

"What did I tell you about being nice?" Kuei chided. The king could kick himself for not teaching Bosco manners earlier. It wasn't much of a surprise that he didn't seem to know them now.

"But she's the worst one," Bosco said with a look.

"The war is over. Times have changed."

Bosco frowned and then lied down.

Iroh started. "Thank you all for coming. We have a lot of issues to discuss, so we should try to move swiftly, but remain careful not to rush ourselves."

"I think our immediate focus should be the armistice agreements," Chief Arnook said.

Aang had some drafts. "Azula and I started to draft them, but we needed to figure out who was signing for the Fire Nation."

They hadn't appointed a sovereign. Only the Fire Lord could sign.

Iroh and Zuko looked at each other. Iroh wondered why Zuko hadn't signed htem.

"We don't have a Fire Lord," Zuko said finally.

"What?" Hakoda said to him.

"Well, the sages were confused. Ozai wrote me out of the line of succession, but he wrote out Azula next, so there is technically no heir."

"But you're the oldest!" Iroh told him.

"But Fire Lords get to pick their successors, so they got confused." Some of the sages said it reverted back to Zuko and others said Azula was the leader. She couldn't legally be written out of the line of succession without another option.

"What is the problem?" Aang asked.

"Some of the sages think I'm the Fire Lord, and some of them think Azula's Fire Lord. They haven't been able to decide, and it's supposed to be unanimous!"

Iroh gasped. "When were you going to tell me this?"

"I tried, but we were so busy with everything else I just didn't have the time."

"What if we decide?" Arnook suggested.

"The sages don't have to listen to us," Zuko said.

"But they will listen to me," Azula said. "I don't want to be Fire Lord."

"What?" Iroh and Zuko both said to her.

"I'm 14 and I have other responsibilities."

"Oh right," Zuko said. Being a pregnant Fire Lord probably wasn't going to be much fun. "Well, we'll tell the sages today, and then I'll sign the agreements."

The agreements were simple. They just marked the end of the war and the exchange of prisoners and territories. The reparations and sanctions would be decided upon later.

"Next issue," Iroh said "is what do we do with the war criminals?" Mainly Ozai but there could be more.

"I think Ozai should face charges in the Earth Kingdom," General Fong said.

"I think we should get the first shot," Azula said. "Most of the evidence and the witnesses to Ozai's crimes are in the Fire Nation. If the Earth Kingdom had a trial, but they had no legal mechanism to make witnesses appear or to execute search warrants, it would be a pretty pathetic trial."

"Azula has a point," Iroh said. "Not to say that he won't face charges in the Earth Kingdom, but if the Fire Nation goes first, then the Earth Kingdom can just take all of the evidence that is collected instead of starting from scratch."

The leaders voted 5-0 to have his first trial be in the Fire Nation.

Next were the Southern Raiders and the people who experimented on the waterbenders.

Azula wanted a military tribunal. "Our laws on military conduct are quite severe. They will likely be executed."

Aang didn't like the sound of that, but he held his tongue.

"But their crimes were in the water tribes," Arnook said. "We should get to try them."

"In what court? You don't even have prisons."

The two looked ready to throw it down.

Zuko had to mediate. "I think we should discuss the process for trying them with Chiefs Arnook and Hakoda later, but for now, they should be round up by our military and put in our jails. They'll likely escape otherwise."

They moved on to the next topic. Fong brought up Ba Sing Se. "I want to see charges."

Bosco whistled in agreement.

Everyone looked at Azula. "Maybe we should charge you for losing the city to three 14 year old girls."

He shot up out of his chair. Aang got between them. "Hold on. The worst thing she did in the Earth Kingdom was shoot me, and I don't want to press charges against her."

"Neither do I," Kuei said.

"What?" said everyone.

"I had a couple of months to think about it and if I lost my city to her cunning ways, that was really my own fault. I should have been better informed and better prepared."

That seemed too astute for Kuei.

"I mean that's true," Sokka said, "but you just want to say oh well?"

"Yes."

"That's absurd," General Fong exclaimed.

"Well I think it's about time Kuei made decisions for himself," Aang said. "Next topic!"

They went down their list. They were almost at the end when Fong said, "I think Azula should be written out of the line of succession for the throne."

"What?" Aang said to him.

"This isn't even world business," Azula complained. "It's Fire Nation business. That would be like me saying we should kick Fong out of the military because he sucks."

Fong jumped out of his chair.

Again Aang had to break it up. "I think this is for Zuko to consider alone"

"And I'm not considering it. We have only three members in the royal family. I don't think I can write her out of the line of succession. Someone might kill me and try to become Fire Lord that way."

Iroh was about to say something, but then he didn't.

* * *

After the meeting ended, Zuko tried to talk to his sister. "Have you thought about what you want to do?"

"I want to just disappear, but I guess I'll have to stay at the palace and get used to motherhood."

"I meant about the father." Zuko thought it was time they found him now that the war was over.

"I don't know how to find him."

"What? You found the avatar repeatedly. Just do whatever you did then."

"It was easier when I had a name," she hissed.

"What?"

"I don't know who he is!"

"What do you mean you don't know who he is?" he yelled.

"It was at a masquerade ball," she said. "I didn't give him a real name and I assume the name he gave me was fake too."

"What does he look like?"

"I don't know."

"WHAT?"

"I SAID I DON'T KNOW!"

Everyone was looking at Azula now.

"He didn't take off his mask?"

"And neither did I, so he doesn't know who I am, even if he finds out about the baby, he won't know it's his. I think I'm all alone on this one."

Azula walked away.

"Is she pregnant or something?" Fong asked.

Zuko shook his head and walked off. How could she have sex with a guy and not see his face? The whole thing sounded so bizarre. He wondered how they would ever track him down.

He went to talk to Mai. "Did you know about the masquerade ball?"

"She told you."

"Yeah she did."

"Well, I got a copy of the guest list from a servant, but I didn't find any guy named Tyrin. Either he gave her a false name or he wasn't on the guest list. He could have snuck in like we did, or maybe he's married and didn't want his real name to be known."

"We should see if we could check the census records for the city. If it is his real name, he might appear there."

Zuko nodded. "How did this happen?"

"Teenage rebellion? Her whole life has been about following orders and being flawless, disciplined, and perfect. She had one night where no one was looming over her and she could just get drunk and be a kid. Lots of people do it. She just happened to be the one who got pregnant."

Zuko frowned. "That sounds way too normal for her."

"Did it ever occur to you that under the Princess veneer, there is a normal teenage girl there?"

"No, it didn't." Zuko admitted.

"We'll find this guy."

"What if he's not the kind of guy we should find?" Azula only knew him for one night. He might be a total jerk.

"Then we'll tell him to fuck off." No matter who the father was the baby was a prince or a princess of the Fire Nation. Azula would keep the child in the palace.

* * *

Aang and his friends went to get some snacks after the meeting.

"I love this palace," Sokka told htem.

"You love any palace," Katara retorted.

"When they feed me like this, yes!" Sokka was eating a sausage that was put in a long roll of bread. "It's meat, but you don't need any utensils!"

"It's not like you use them when you should anyway," Katara said snarkily.

"Whoa! Sugar Queen's got an attitude today," Toph teased.

Katara shrugged.

"Did you want to check out the garden with me?" Aang asked Katara.

"Sure."

"Way not to invite us," Sokka yelled after them.

"Stop being a cockblock," Toph told him.

"She's my sister. I'm going to block him until they're married."

"Does Suki have an older brother?"

Sokka cringed. "I hope not." She would have mentioned it, right?

Toph shook her head.

"It's so peaceful here," Katara said as they sat down by the stream.

Aang waterbended a flower and froze it. "I know. There were lots of gardens when I visited before the war."

"What was the world like then?"

"A lot of fun. I had a friend named Kuzon who I'd goof off with when I came to the Fire Nation. I was a friend of Bumi's, and he was a wacky little boy, but I'm sure you knew that. It just didn't matter what nation you were from."

"Do you think the world will ever be like that again?"

"Not for a long time. Everyone alive right now has some memory of the war. As the new generations come who didn't live through it, I think people will slowly start to forget who came from where, but I don't think it will ever be the way it was before I got frozen."

"I know I said it before, but I'm so sorry that you lost everyone."

"When I first found out my people were gone, I didn't know how I was ever going to get past it. It was my fault. I'm the Avatar. I'm supposed to make sure these things don't happen, but everything is apart of the same whole. I can't get back the friends I lost, but I can make new friends and with them, I can make a world that my past friends would be proud to look down upon. I can't go back to them, but I can move forward, with you."

He kissed her. Katara knew exactly what she wanted and she kissed him back.

* * *

Sokka and Toph were spying on the fledging couple.

"They're so cute. It makes me want to barf," Toph retorted.

"EW! OOGIES!"

"Shh! We don't want them to see us spying on them."

"Do we really care?"

"Maybe not."

With her earthbending, Toph could see Kuei and Bosco on the other side of the garden. "I don't know how Kuei deals with that bear. He's a pain in the ass."

"He reminds me of an eight year old boy."

"Eight year olds are the worst."

"It's the age where they start to form cliques and get really bratty."

"Were you in a clique, Snoozles?"

"Me, nah. I was too cool for that."

"Nah. I bet you were a little brat and wouldn't let the younger kids play with you."

"Nah, it was more about being picked first in sports."

"As I'm sure you realize, my parents never let me socialize with the other kids. I didn't get my chance to be an eight year old little shit!"

"Aw. You can be a brat now."

"Oh well in that case, you're not cool enough to hang out with my group. Bye!"

"Aw!" Sokka said feigning seriously.

"Nah, you can stay. I might kick out your sister though." She's too much of a mom.

"You'll have to kick out Aang too. I don't think he'll be there without her."

"Hmm, just two of us doesn't make much of a clique. Maybe the acrobat and knife girl can join."

"We'll have to invite Azula. I think they're a matched set."

"Well, we're not inviting the baby, so maybe she'll have to stay home."

"We could totally have a snobby baby. It can turn its nose up at everyone and we can teach it to make obscene hand jestures."

Toph cracked up. "That's a good one Snoozles."

"I can't believe they're spying on us," Katara complained.

"You can't? It's Sokka and Toph. It's like all they do," other than eat and try to scam people.

"I'm 14 years old. I don't need a babysitter to be around a boy."

"It's not like you're going to get pregnant."

Katara frowned.

"Too soon?"

"I still can't believe she's only 14." She doesn't act like she's 14.

"I know. Zuko said she's the youngest firebending master in world history."

"But you mastered fire at 12, sort of."

"She became a master at 11."

"Whoa."

"Yeah, and learned lightening at 12."

"Do you think her baby's going to be a prodigy?"

"It could be if it's a firebender."

* * *

It was stuffy in Azula's room. She had left the windows closed and now it was too hot. She opened them on one side to create a draft and decided to walk around the palace.

In one room, she heard the warriors telling jokes about something.

Next, she saw Ty Lee laughing with Haru said on the patio. "I wonder if they're going to get together."

Azula observed for a moment. He seemed into her, the way he looked at her, and his body language seemed inviting.

It was hard to tell if Ty Lee actually liked a guy. She would use the same flirty demeanor and either accept a date or chi block him and run.

She went down the hall and Zuko was meeting with the sages. Azula wondered if she made a mistake walking away from the crown. I could have fought for it. I likely would have won.

She had more political experience, and she would be in a better position to maintain the domestic alliances her father built to keep the nobility in order.

But then she remembered what happened when she froze at the Western Air Temple. She almost died because she was worried that her lightening would harm her baby.

Azula realized being a good mother mattered more to her than the politics and it would be practically impossible to be a good mother while being single and Fire Lord. It was too much at one time and when things get to be too much, she freezes. "I already froze once. I don't want to do it again."

She would support her brother as needed, but the Crown was his problem now. She had her own little monster to think about.

Speaking of her baby, when's dinner?


	7. Chapter 7

Warning, reference to a prior non-con relationship. Other than that, fluff and

Azula went to the kitchen to learn that dinner wasn't until 7:30. She took an apple and ate it on her way to the garden. She was surprised to see Kuei there.

"You didn't go home yet?"

"The garden here is so pleasant."

Bosco was not happy to see Azula, and he growled.

"Bosco, what did I tell you about your manners?"

"But she …"

"Bosco, you have to learn to let go of the past and move forward. Too much anger, and it will only make you bitter."

Bosco frowned and walked off.

"Don't mind him. I never really taught him etiquette and I have a lot of catching up to do."

Azula smiled. It was amusing that he raised this bear like a child.

"My mother planted this garden before she left."

Kuei looked at her warmly. "I'm sure she spent a lot of time on it."

"She did," and she never invited me, Bitch!

"Have you thought about what you want to do after the war?"

"I don't have many options."

"Of course you do. You're a Princess. You're clearly very bright, and it's not like Ozai can tell you what to do anymore."

"He can't, but I have to stay here now."

"Zuko didn't put you on house arrest, did he?"

"No, but he may as well have."

"I don't understand."

He'll find out anyway. "I'm pregnant."

"You're what?"

She didn't say it again.

"What happened to the father?"

"I don't know."

"Surely he'll come find you when he learns of the baby."

"The sad thing is he won't. I didn't want him to know who I was, so I gave him a false name."

"Now why did you do that?"

" I didn't want to blow my cover. This happened in Ba Sing Se."

"Oh. I can see why you used a false name, but you have such a pretty face. I'm sure he'll remember you."

"This is going to sound so dumb, but it was at your masquerade ball. He didn't even see my face."

"You crashed my ball before you conquered the city?"

"I did. Are you going to add it to my list of war crimes?"

"It depends. Are you the one who ate all my ice cream that night?"

"No," she laughed.

"Then I can forgive your intrusion. Did you enjoy yourself?"

"I did. It was good party. I just started puking six weeks later."

"Ooh!" Kuei turned to her. "I met a girl at the party too."

"Did you get her name?"

"I assumed she gave me a real name, but maybe she didn't. I told her my real name."

"It's hard to hide your name when you're the king."

"He didn't know you were the princess."

Touche.

"What did you like about her?"

**Flashback**

Kuei had been dreading this party. It was the Council of Five's idea to have him throw this ball and try to find him a wife. Either a woman would corner him and make him feel uncomfortable or he would get dragged to a woman by her brother or father and they were both uncomfortable. It seemed impossible to just go up to a normal girl and talk to her.

He was avoiding one pushy Lady when he saw a beautiful girl in the corner near the punchbowl. She didn't have any father or brother (or husband) around and he went to go talk to her.

"You look lovely tonight," he said.

"Thank you."

"I would say you look lovely every night, but I don't believe we've met."

"Ursa."

"Tyrin. May I have this dance?"

"Why not?"

They went to the dance floor.

"What brings you to this ball?" she asked him.

"I'm supposed to be looking for a wife."

"How is the search going?"

"Bad. I either get chased down by pushy women or I get dragged to a woman by her pushy father or brother."

"So you have a choice between women who are gold diggers or women with no backbone who have social climbers for relatives."

He laughed. "It looks that way."

"Well if you want, I'll give you a free evaluation of any girl who comes your way."

The evaluations she gave were hilarious.

"That girl laughing by the punchbowl. She's a total tramp. I guarantee you she likes it dirty."

The King gasped in surprised. "You can tell that from her laugh?"

"It's the fake, I think everything you say is funny, let's go do it, laugh. Trust me, I've heard it before."

**Present**

"She talked to me like I was a normal guy, not like I was the king. She seemed genuine, which is a rarity at those things."

Azula could relate to that. "Did you try to find her?"

"I wasn't sure how. I didn't see her face. I only remember she had gold eyes, like yours. Maybe you know her."

She must be Fire Nation. "She's probably a noblewoman, so I probably do know her."

"Well, I gave her this necklace. I had two of them." He showed her the other one. It had three triangles nestled. "So if you see a woman wearing it, then she's the one."

Suddenly, Azula ran away.

Kuei frowned. He thought they had been bonding. He waited for a few minutes and was about to leave when Azula charged at him, holding a piece of metal in her hands. "I do know her," she said softly. It was the matching necklace in her hands.

It was Azula all along.

"I didn't know, however, that your first name was Tyrin."

"Many people don't," Kuei said with a laugh. He stood up and embraced her. Before he could ask her anything, she kissed him, hard. Her lips crushed his as she pulled him to her. His long arms enveloped her small frame.

"You know I couldn't forget your kisses no matter how hard I tried."

He pulled her even closer. "Good, because I couldn't forget a thing about you."

He scooped her into his arms and carried her to bed.

* * *

Little did they know they had an audience spying on them from the other side of the garden.

"Did we just see Kuei making out with Azula?" Sokka questioned once he got out of shock.

"Well I didn't see shit, but my earthbending detecting that."

"Toph your language." Katara scolded.

"Sorry, I'm kind of baffled right now."

"Does he know she's pregnant?" Aang questioned.

"Well, he knows he's not the father," Sokka quipped.

Katara smacked his head. "Don't be a cow pig!"

"OW!"

"I changed my mind. Katara you're in the clique," Toph told her.

"What?"

"Should we tell Zuko?" Aang questioned.

"Yes," Sokka said while Katara said "No."

"He's her brother."

"It's her life, and if she wants to make out with the king," or do whatever they're doing, "it's her business."

"You don't think he's the father do you?" Toph questioned.

Sokka frowned. "That would only make sense if she slept with him before she took Ba Sing Se." He gulped. "She slept with him and then took his kingdom."

"She screwed him before she screwed him," Toph laughed.

"That's a good one," Sokka high fived her.

Katara contemplated this. "That would mean Azula's child is going to be a prince or a princess of both nations."

Sokka scratched his head. "I feel like that's really important, but I'm not sure I understand the implications of it."

"Then maybe we should tell Zuko," Aang said.

"What if we're wrong?" Toph pointed out.

"Toph's right. We should wait for Azula to say, so we don't create unnecessary problems," Katara added.

"But creating unnecessary problems is what I do," Sokka told them.

"Snoozles has a point," said Toph. "But so does Sugar Queen. Let's wait until the coronation and if she hasn't said anything about her baby, we'll get her to tell us who the dad is."

* * *

Mai was sifting through the records of Ba Sing Se. Ozai had started a census after Azula had conquered the city.

"I'm not seeing a Tyrin anywhere," she told her boyfriend.

"They didn't finish the census," Zuko pointed out. "He could live in the middle or lower ring."

"Hopefully the middle," they both said.

"We can also get a more complete list from Kuei. Maybe I should go ask."

Zuko couldn't find Kuei but he did find Bosco. "Have you seen Kuei?"

The bear shook his head.

"Thanks anyway." Zuko got the bear some fruit.

Bosco had no problem with Zuko. He wasn't there when Azula took over the palace, so he didn't associate him with the usurping of the throne.

On the way back to his office, Zuko saw General Fong.

"Where's Kuei?" they each asked the other.

"I haven't seen him since the meeting."

"He said he was going to the garden, but then only Bosco was out there."

Where could he be?

As soon as her back hit her silk sheets, it was like Azula was on autopilot. She peeled away his clothes as he kissed her affectionately. After she rolled on top of him, she took her shirt off.

Kuei started to take off the rest of her outfit. It was much simpler than that dress she wore at the ball, which had knots all over the place. Everything she was wearing today just snapped off, and the simplicity was appreciated.

Their lips and fingertips roamed freely as they moved into position. She wrapped her legs around him and he held her close to him. She thought they were going to start quickly, but then he started kissing her neck and chest. He planned on taking his time with her. She wasn't rushing out in the middle of the night this time.

Her body was flawless, porcelain skin, a generous bosom with pink pebbles on top and a narrow waist that led to round hips and strong legs. Over the next seven months, her body would change, but to him she'd remain perfect.

He eventually moved inside of her. She used her legs to flip him over, so she was on top. She wanted to take control, and he was happy to het her.

When they were done, he held her against his chest, her back to him as he nestled on her shoulder. "We're going to be parents," he whispered into her ear.

"We are." It was the first time she thought of parenthood as a "we" experience instead of an "I" one. I. It felt much better this way.

"I want to marry you," he said.

"Because I'm pregnant," she told him.

"Because I love you."

"How can you love me?" She turned to him. "We hardly know each other and I jailed you for two months."

He pinned her arms over her head and kissed her. "I know you well enough to know that I can't stand being with out you, and I'm over the jail thing. My servants still brought me my favorite food and books from the library."

"Zuko's going to flip out."

"Well, what else is new?"

"Your citizens might object."

"They'll have to get over it."

Azula was certain that he would change his mind once she told him about her past. "Before I say yes, there are some things that you need to know."

She explained her sordid relationship with her father from her first training sessions, to when she mastered lightening until her thirteenth birthday when she was introduced into society as a woman.

"He said he had a special present for me. I just knew it was a sky ship, so I could finally travel. On my bed was a box. I was convinced that in it was the deed, but instead, it was a silk baby doll," she told him. "He had me wear it and then he pushed me on the bed. He said that I was perfect and he had to make sure no other man ruined me."

It lasted for over a year, until he sent her to arrest her brother.

"I was a little relieved when I failed. It meant I could stay away longer, but I couldn't come back a failure or else he'd beat me and then he'd do it." She looked at him sadly. "I'm broken, and I understand if you don't want to marry me or have me raising your child."

Kuei firmly held her. "I don't care what your father did," he said firmly.

Azula was baffled.

"I mean it was a horrible thing for him to do and he should rot, but it doesn't make me love you any less. What he did was sick, but it was his sickness, not yours.

I love you and I'm confident you will be able to love me and love our child. This is our chance to have a new start, and I think we both need one."

He kissed her before she could object. They weren't going anywhere for a while.

* * *

It was dinnertime and Ty Lee went to look for Azula when she didn't show up. She got to her room and knocked, but she received no answer.

She tried looking into the keyhole but the room was dark. Is she even in there?

Ty Lee went to the room next door and walked along the ledges to Azula's window. She peered in and saw what looked like moving in the sheets. "She's having sex?"

Ty Lee left. Who is she having sex with?

When she got to dinner, General Fong was there as was Bosco.

"You're joining us?" Ty Lee didn't expect that. He seemed to hate the Fire Nation.

"Well, Kuei is MIA and his bear is here, so I guess I'm her until he resurfaces."

Ty Lee looked around. No one else was missing. Is she sleeping with Kuei? Oh for spirits sake she is sleeping with Kuei. I gotta tell Mai.

"Is Azula coming?" Zuko asked Ty Lee.

Probably by now. "Um, she's going to eat later."

"Okay. Shall we?"

They enjoyed fried komodo chicken and waffles. For Aang, it was fried tofu and waffles. The meal was a great balance of sweet, savory and spicy.

"I could eat this all day," Sokka declared.

"You could eat anything all day," Katara retorted.

"You're always crimping on my style."

"What style?"

"OOH! Sugar Queen."

The group was back to ripping on each other and forgot about Azula and Kuei. Ty Lee however, did not.

"Mai, let's chat." She dragged her friend away before Zuko could figure out what they were talking about.

"Is something wrong?"

"You tell me. Has Azula ever said anything to you about Kuei?"

"No, why?"

"I saw them having sex."

"WHAT?"

"I went to her room to see if she was ready for dinner, and she was definitely having sex. Kuei's the only person who's missing."

Mai contemplated. It sure wasn't a servant or a guard. "KUEI?"

"Yeah. What the hell?"

"Does he know she's pregnant?"

Ty Lee shrugged. "Maybe she told him. Maybe she didn't."

Mai snuck up to Azula's room only to draw the same conclusion. "They're asleep now."

"What's going on?"

Before Mai could answer, the servant came with the book she requested. "This is the most complete registry of Ba Sing Se residents we have."

She and Ty Lee decided to resume the search for Azula's baby daddy and confront her later about the Kuei situation.

"We should start with residents of the palace," Mai said. "They wouldn't have been on the guest list."

They started going through the names. There was no Tyrin until Ty Lee looked at the top. "Did you know Kuei is his surname?"

"What?"

"It says here, his name is Tyrin Kuei."

Mai's jaw dropped. "He's the father?"

Ty Lee and Mai were baffled. "So she slept with him, got pregnant, then threw him in jail and is now sleeping with him again."

Mai cackled. "Zuko's going to die when he hears this."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"NO! They need to tell him." Mai needed a drink. "I need some whiskey right now."

"Me too!"

The two girls went to get a bottle. Shit just got real!

* * *

The next morning, Azula woke up with Kuei on top of her. "Was this to make sure I didn't sneak out?" she wondered, as it was hard to move.

She usually got up to train at sunrise, but he didn't seem intent on moving or letting her go, so she closed her eyes again.

Eventually, she needed to get up, and she made him roll over.

"I need to talk to your brother," Kuei said to her, half awake.

"Have fun with that."

She changed and went downstairs to train. When it was time for her to come back inside, Bosco was there.

He could smell his owner on her, and he was not amused.

"I know I wasn't nice to you before, but maybe we can start again."

He growled.

She went to the stables and fetched him a honeycomb.

He looked suspicious of her, but he accepted the offering. As soon as he was done, he lunged at her. She didn't want to hurt him, and she didn't have to. Instead of attacking, he licked her face

"EW!"

Kuei got dressed and went to find the Fire Lord.

The guard had him wait outside and went into Zuko's office. "King Kuei wants to talk to you."

"When did he want to meet?"

"He's outside your door."

"What? Let him in."

The guard escorted Kuei into the room.

"What brings you here this morning?"

"I wanted to talk to you about your sister."

"Azula?"

"I assume she's your only sister."

"Well yes. What's going on?"

"I would like her hand."

For what, he was about to say before he thought about it. "You want to marry my sister?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize she's pregnant?"

"I do."

"With an unknown man's child."

"Well, he's not exactly unknown."

"What?"

"I'm the father."

"You're the father." Zuko said slowly before he understood. "YOU KNOCKED UP MY SISTER!"

"Well, I didn't realize she was your sister or that she was 'knocked up' as it were."

Zuko was about to hyperventilate. "YOU HAD SEX WITH MY SISTER!" He couldn't believe she slept with him. "That's not exactly believable."

"I know. She's way out of my league."

Aesthetically, he had a point, but Azula was not exactly the best when it came to social graces. He really couldn't picture her dating at all.

Zuko was too stuped to say anything other than, "well if she accepts your proposal, then I approve, but I hope you know what you're doing. She can be quite troublesome."

"Oh I know," he said, "but we understand each other now."

Zuko realized this would be politically complicated for several reasons, but she was pregnant and a Princess. It was better for her to marry Kuei even if it complicated things later.

Kuei had to get back to his inn room. His delegation was probably wondering where he had gone.

"Come on Bosco. We got to skedaddle."

He was just starting to like the princess too.

"You'll see her soon. Come on."


	8. Chapter 8

Zuko's Coronation

For the first time in over 100 years, people from around the world were there to celebrate. It was a joyous affair.

Teo and Haru both reunited with their fathers.

Hakoda sat with both of his children. "Your mother would be so proud of both of you right now." Katara had a tear in her eye as she clutched her mother's necklace.

Azula sat in the royal box with Iroh. They didn't speak.

Azula thought Zuko had what it took to be a good Fire Lord. He had the heart for it anyway. He just needed some home training, well maybe a lot of training.

At the end of his speech, Zuko held up the armistice agreements declaring, "The war is over!"

Everyone cheered and then took a break before the banquet started.

Kuei and Azula went to the garden. There was plenty of time before the banquet started. Azula's friends were pre-gaming. For obvious reasons, she couldn't join them.

He said to her, "I still have the plaque that says Earth Queen Azula on it. I was going to see if you wanted it as a memento, but now I can just put it back up." He chuckled as he got down on one knee. "Will you be my queen?"

Azula still couldn't believe he wanted to do this. "Well if you're stupid enough to ask me then I better say yes." It was a white gold ring with emeralds on either side of a diamond. It was exquisite.

He slipped the ring onto her finger and kissed her hand. "There's no one else I'd rather have at my side."

* * *

When they went back to the party, they remembered they were sitting at different tables. Azula took her chair, which was next to her brother's. Mai was on his other side and Iroh was next to her. Ty Lee was next to Azula.

The Princess asked her friend for the rice and when Mai handed it to her, Ty Lee noticed something. "Where did you get that rock?"

"Rock?" Iroh questioned.

Mai looked at her hand. "That's an engagement ring!"

"Okay, I'm engaged happy."

"Since when," Ty Lee squeaked.

"And why didn't you tell us," Mai chastised.

"I just got engaged today."

"This morning?" Ty Lee questioned.

"This afternoon."

"Where is he?" Ty Lee asked her.

"Who is he?" Mai questioned.

They both knew, but they wanted her to say it.

"Can't we go over this tomorrow?"

"NO!" they both said to her.

"I've been dealing with your moody, pregnant self for weeks," Ty Lee complained. "No way am I waiting until tomorrow to deal with this story."

"I got like two weeks off, but I want to know too," Mai told her.

"Fine, I'll tell you after dinner."

"You aren't going to tell us?" Iroh questioned.

"Zuko already knows."

Mai snapped her head. "And you didn't tell me!"

"I thought she should since it's her news."

"That's baloney and you know it!"

"Okay, Okay. I'm still in denial!"

Iroh looked at the ring. Clearly, the guy was from the Earth Kingdom and loaded. There were a handful of wealthy nobles here. Which one was he?

Sokka licked his lips. "There's so much meat on this table!"

"You are such a goon," Katara told him.

"I am not!"

"Are too."

"You two are so classy," Bato commented before he burped really loudly. "Oops!"

Kuei couldn't keep his eyes off the princess. She had a glow to her that might have come from her pregnancy or from their recent engagement. He hoped it was a bit of both.

His advisor chastised him. "Stop staring at her. She's going to think you're creepy."

I don't think so, Kuei said to himself as he went back to his cow pig.

After the champagne toast, Ty Lee and Mai "kidnapped" Azula.

"Now I want to hear everything," Ty Lee said. "Start at the beginning."

"We went to that party in the Palace." Azula had wanted to go which surprised Ty Lee and Mai, but they said sure and went along. "And I wasn't quite sure how to approach people, so I just drank my (spiked) punch near the wall. He approached me and asked me if I was enjoying myself." In hindsight, Azula realized she should have figured out he was the host, aka he was the king.

"I said that it was a nice party," and it was.

He said, "That means you're bored, doesn't it?"

"He was funny in an awkward sort of way. I asked him what his name was."

"He said it was Tyrin."

"I couldn't come up with a name, so I said my name was Ursa."

Mai snorted.

"Well usually, I just say I'm Mai or Ty Lee, but that wouldn't work."

"When did you pretend to be us?" Mai questioned.

"Not important," Azula told them quickly. "Anyway, he asked me to dance. He took my hand in his as we went to the floor." They both had been classically trained. "He moved quite well. I asked him how long did they make him take lessons."

"Three years and then I refused to go anymore."

"That sounds about right."

The party had been to find the King a mate. Many a lady was hoping for a chance to flirt with him, but Azula had stolen all of his attention to their chagrin. "He would point out the women who had hit on him, and we'd make fun of them together. He asked me I wanted to sneak out.

We found a balcony and started gossiping about the other guests. Apparently one the men downstairs had gotten so drunk at the last party, he had fallen asleep under the couch, and his wife thought he had run off with his concubine. By the time he had gotten home, 'she had already cut up all of his clothes.'

He didn't seem to think too much of the nobility which was amusing. He asked me if I was involved with anyone.

I told him I was single.

He said good before he kissed me.

It was her first kiss. For whatever reason, Ozai had never kissed her.

"One kiss turned into another one and things started to move quickly (too quickly). I suggested we go back to the party and we did." Azula thought that would have been enough to keep their inhibitions in check, but it only took a little more punch for them to throw caution out the window.

"We ended up leaving the party again and going into a bedroom upstairs. We started kissing and he tried to take off my mask. I stopped him, so my cover wouldn't get blown. Before he could protest, I kissed him and pushed him onto the bed."

Their clothes came off, soft kisses and caresses preceded biting and scratching. It was everything her first time should have been.

"He held me afterwards. It didn't even occur to me that you two were looking for me until I heard Mai's signal."

When they don't want to use names, they whistle to find each other.

"I started to get dressed and told him I had to go."

He gave me this necklace and said he if I wanted him to find me, I should wear it and he would.

"I didn't think that could really work but then he came to the palace. He showed me a matching necklace and said he had given a girl the other one, and he was hoping he'd be able to find her.

I realized the girl he was looking for was me and then we got together."

Mai pursed her lips. Only Azula could get into something like this.

"You're engaged to the Earth King!" Mai knew this but she still couldn't believe it.

"I am."

Ty Lee started cracking up. "You screwed him before you screwed him over."

Mai starting guffawing. "Princess Azula screws Kings."

"Very funny," Azula said dryly.

"Does that mean you're going to be the Earth Queen, again?" Ty Lee questioned.

"Yes."

Mai chuckled. "Only you could accidentally get knocked up by the Earth King!"

Azula rolled her eyes, but there was no higher-ranking man for her. "I guess I always aim for the top."

"I can't believe Zuko kept this quiet," Mai said to her.

The Fire Lord was talking to his uncle.

"How did she get engaged?" Iroh questioned.

"The father found her after all." She didn't think he'd come for her, but he did. "He asked me for her hand, and I said yes."

"And this was?"

"A couple of days ago. He must have proposed today."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I'd figured they should tell people. It's their marriage."

"And am I going to get a name?"

"I'm sure it will be obvious once Azula comes back."

The three girls returned.

People were starting to dance.

Kuei finally had a chance to greet his queen. "I've been waiting all night for this," He said as he led her to the dance floor. His hands were on her waist as her hands found his shoulders. "You are quite stunning," he said. She wore a red dress with gold accents.

He was wearing his formal robes, green and black. "You look rather dapper yourself."

He laughed as he spun her around.

The rest of the party was baffled by their behavior.

"What is he doing?" General Fong grumbled.

Toph could feel Kuei's heart racing through the floor. "Oh he's so smitten!"

Aang, Katara and Sokka all looked at each other. "If Zuko didn't know before, he does now," Aang told his girlfriend.

Iroh watched them. "Don't tell me that they are …"

Zuko looked at him but didn't speak.

"Do you know what this means?"

"That Kuei has a bizarre taste in women?"

"This isn't a joke. She's going to be the Earth Queen!"

"What am I supposed to do? She's pregnant with his kid!"

That was a whole different problem. She could try to put her child on both thrones. "We need to have another summit about this."

Kuei dipped Azula and kissed her in front of a shocked crowd. She pulled him close to her, deepening the kiss as he spun her around.

Bato looked wide-eyed. "When did they get together?"

Arnook was shocked. "Um, I don't think you're supposed to do that with Princesses on the dance floor."

The lovers were lost in their own world, oblivious to the people watching them. Everyone was watching them.

The Earth Kingdom table was shell-shocked. "What on Earth is he doing?"

"That was a bold move," Azula whispered in his ear.

"I want everyone to know you're mine."

During and after their little display, everyone was talking.

Sokka and Aang approached Zuko.

"Are they …" Aang started.

"Is he the …." Sokka continued.

"Yes and yes." Zuko said quickly.

Sokka looked at his friend. "How did this happen?"

"Was this before or after she put him in jail?"

Zuko snorted. "Before I think."

"How?" Sokka questioned.

Zuko shrugged. "All I know was there was a masquerade ball."

"At least they have a happy ending," Aang said cheerily.

Zuko saw the way Kuei's delegation was watching them. "I hope they do anyway."

General Fong dragged Kuei out of there at the end of the night. "No way are you having a sleepover with the Princess."

Kuei pouted. "But we're going to …"

"Don't want to hear it." He wrestled the King into the carriage. "You can see her during the daytime," and hopefully with guards.

* * *

The next day was one for official business. Now that Zuko was coronated, he was able to take the full mantle of powers that went with the crown.

Azula was there to help him. "You are going to have to find a way to make sure the national debt doesn't get too high."

"How do I do that?"

"Well, you can either slow down the money going out, i.e. try to pay out the reparations over a longer time period, but less money each year or you can try to bring more money in, which typically comes from raising taxes, but it can also come from selling capital assets."

"What assets would I sell?"

Azula had an idea. "We own a lot of factories. We could sell shares in them and allow those shares to be publicly traded."

"So everyone would own them."

"Every investor would own a little piece."

Zuko thought. "That's genius."

"I know."

They started working out the logistics for such a plan. They would need a simple but thorough proposal to bring to the Council.

When Iroh came to work, he was surprised to see Azula. It looked like they had been working for a while.

"Early start?"

"I guess it was," Zuko said. They had a lot of financial details to sort out. Zuko hadn't been in the country for the past three years. Azula was more adept at the current fiscal situation.

"Can I have a word, Zuko?"

The two men went into the adjacent study.

"Is this a good idea?"

"Balancing the budget? I think I have to."

"I meant working with your sister."

"She was Ozai's right hand man; no one knows it better."

That's also a concern. "I meant she's engaged to your biggest political rival."

Zuko hadn't thought about her loyalty. "I guess she won't be able to help me after the wedding. Best try to get this out of the way now then."

Zuko went back to work.

Iroh needed to call a meeting sooner rather than later. He managed to catch the other leaders before they returned home and requested they meet to discuss an issue of the thrones.

A few days later, the leaders and their delegates found themselves meeting in the Fire Nation palace once again.

Chief Hakoda raised his hand.

"Yes."

"Why are we here? The request was rather cryptic."

"We are here because I have some concerns about the future of the Earth Kingdom throne and that of the Fire Nation throne." Iroh told them.

"Neither Kuei nor Zuko has an heir, but why does that involve us?" Arnook questioned.

"That's the thing. Kuei does have an heir or he will."

"What?" Arnook questioned.

"Maybe we should wait for Kuei to get here," Aang said, finally realizing what this meeting was really about.

The King had gone to greet the Princess before the meeting.

"What meeting?"

"Oh they must have forgotten to tell you."

He brought her with him.

"What's going on everyone?" he asked as they got inside.

"Why are the holding hands?" Chief Hakoda questioned. He had assumed Kuei was just drunk when he kissed her, but they seemed to be a real couple.

"Because she's my fiancée."

"WHAT?" Arnook gasped.

"Shocking isn't it," Sokka said.

General Fong looked at him. "You can't marry her!"

"Says who?" Kuei challenged. "I'm the King. I can do what I want."

Aang tried not to laugh.

Sokka didn't. "This is priceless!"

"Why on Earth would you marry Azula?" Fong questioned.

"Because I love her," he said proudly.

"She threw you in jail!"

"She won't do it again." He looked at her, "unless you're into role playing."

She blushed at the insinuation.

Zuko groaned. "No discussing any kind of play play between you two!"

"But their play is why we're here," Aang said with a laugh.

"Good one," Sokka notd.

"Why are we here?" Hakoda still didn't get it.

"Because she's having Kuei's baby," Iroh said exasperated.

Fong's jaw dropped. "You knocked up the Princess. How stupid can you be?"

"It was an accident, but I think our baby is a blessing."

Fong yelled, "A blessing. You're telling me Ozai's progeny is going to rule the Earth Kingdom and you think it's a blessing? How do you even know if the bastard is yours?"

[THWAK!}

Kuei punched Fong in the nose. "Don't call my kid a bastard."

Blood started pouring out of Fong's face.

No one saw Kuei doing that. The room was silent, except for Zuko who called for a servant to take Fong to the doctor and try to fix his face.

"Well, this is unexpected news," Hakoda said as he sipped his water.

"Congratulations?" Arnook said to the Princess. That sounded like the correct thing to say.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

* * *

Katara wondered why they couldn't go home yet. "What are the they doing in there?"

"Having their little boys club," Toph said dryly. "We were there to kick ass and take names, but politics is still for the men."

Katara rolled her eyes. "I wonder if Azula's in there."

They went to her room, where Mai and Ty Lee were also looking for the Princess.

"She must be at the meeting," Katara said.

"What meeting?" Mai asked her.

Katara shrugged. "It was last minute. My dad wasn't sure why they were meeting when he left this morning."

"Do you think it's about Zula's engagement?" Ty Lee questioned.

"She's engaged?" Toph questioned.

"To Kuei," Mai told them.

"TO KUEI!" Katara exclaimed. "So he is the father."

"Yep. She got knocked up by the Earth King."

Toph cracked up. "She screwed him before she screwed him!"

"That's what I said," Ty Lee told her.

"She's marrying KUEI!" Katara still didn't get it. "HOW DID THEY?"

"They met at a masquerade ball."

"Was this before or after she jailed him?"

"Before."

"So she slept with him, arrested him and now she's marrying him?"

Mai snorted. "She likes to stay in control." Even when Azula didn't plan, somehow things always ended up as if she had the plan all along.


	9. Chapter 9

Aang was hoping that this meeting could proceed without any more outbursts. "Let's try to stay calm everyone," he said slowly. "Iroh, why don't you start since you requested this meeting?"

Iroh hadn't invited Azula for a reason. Of course, Kuei brought her anyway. "I'm sure this is obvious to you all, but Azula's child will be an heir to both thrones." He took a breath. "I think there should be a law passed such that the child can only take one of them."

"What happens if he or she is the only heir left?" Aang asked Iroh.

"The child should take one throne and a new royal family should take the other one."

"The Fire Nation would fall apart," Azula said bluntly. "The nobles would all start declaring they should be the royal family and there would be a civil war within a month."

The negotiations to make Sozin Fire Lord took years of careful manipulations. If there were a tragedy, they wouldn't have the time to do that again.

"We're short on Earth Kingdom royals," one of Kuei's advisors stated. "Bumi also doesn't have any heirs." If he had, they could suggest his family be the runners up for the Earth Kingdom throne.

"Zuko's only 17," Kuei said. "I'm sure he'll produce an heir when he's ready, then both thrones will be covered."

Zuko looked down sheepishly. He did not want his reproductive plans on the table.

Azula turned to her fiancée. "Iroh thinks I'm going to kill my brother before he gets the chance." She didn't bother to look in his direction when she said it.

"Oh don't be silly," Kuei said. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, he is annoying, but … he's mostly alright I guess."

"Thanks for the endorsement," Zuko said mockingly.

"Anyway, being Fire Lord is going to suck for a while, reparations, sanctions, disgruntled employees of Ozai. I'd much rather not have to deal with it."

"Thanks," Zuko said dryly.

"My son or daughter is eligible for both thrones, but it shouldn't be too hard to work around this. If for some reason, my child was the only surviving royal, then he could take one throne in practice and only be the figurehead for the other throne, while appointed advisors actually ran the country until my child produced an heir."

The room was quiet. Arnook and Hakoda were both concerned about the Sozin bloodline controlling the two largest nations, but it seemed inevitable unless they deposed Kuei and that would a mess in itself.

Aang was hopeful that no one would die unexpectedly.

After the silence was deafening, Sokka finally said, "so we really only have a problem if Azula whacks either Zuko, Kuei or both. How about if she kills either of them, then she goes to jail, but if they die for reasons that had nothing to do with her, her kid gets his or her choice of country to run, while advisors deal with the other one."

"Who will decide if she's responsible? I doubt she'd kill them herself," Iroh said. Knowing her, she would send the Dai Li to do it stealthily.

Sokka sighed. "How about if they are murdered, then she doesn't rule?"

"But they might be murdered by Ozai loyalists who might target her next for turning on him," Hakoda pointed out. "Either of them could be assassinated by any number of people, many of whom have no connection to her." Unfortunately, that was a realistic possibility, especially for Zuko given all of the nobles who were getting rich off the war.

Sokka hoped this would be it. "Alright, I got it. If Keui or Zuko die in a way that suggests homicide, then Aang will lead an investigation and if there is sufficient evidence that she, either herself or anyone that she hired, managed, or controlled killed him, she loses any right to the either throne, but if it's either ambiguous or attributed to a person who's a total stranger to her, then we leave it alone."

Arnook spoke next. "It's impossible to anticipate every outcome that could happen with either royal family. The Northern Water Tribe and the Southern Water Tribe as well has an interest in making sure one person doesn't control both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation, but how the two countries ensure that this doesn't happen isn't for me to say."

"I would agree with that," Hakoda said. "And even if we tried to make preemptive laws now, the sages will do whatever they have to do to keep order later. We could say, Azula's son or daughter can't take both thrones, but if everyone else dies in a sky ship crash, they will presumably ignore any law that leaves them with no King or no Fire Lord."

"I don't see how you could make a contingency plan without them," Aang admitted.

"Then let's adjourn," Arnook said. "I think both rulers should make a plan with his respective sages as to how he wants to handle his line of succession, and they should work together as necessary."

The Chief wanted to get home to his tribe. He had a lot of work to do.

Chief Hakoda went to find his daughter. "I think it's time we get going."

Sokka looked at Zuko. "Hopefully, you don't die for a long time."

"Thanks," Zuko said sardonically.

* * *

Kuei said, "We should start thinking about dates."

"We just got out of a meeting that my uncle called because he thinks I'm going to murder you, and you want to plan our wedding."

"If I'm going to get murdered, then I best make sure the wedding was fun." He kissed her nose before she could respond.

"Then, I guess we should talk to the sages. They have all kinds of customs and whatever."

They went to find them.

Iroh and Zuko remained in the room as the others left. "I don't think you realize the threat your sister poses."

"I don't think she's a threat anymore," Zuko said. "She had a clear shot at the throne, and she passed it up."

Iroh wasn't convinced. "It could have been a clever ploy just to come back for the throne later."

"Why give up the throne just to try and take the same throne later."

"Maybe she wants to become Earth Queen before she becomes Fire Lord."

"I don't see why." To Zuko, it would have made more sense to become Fire Lord, and then tell Kuei he's the father, pressuring him into marrying her and then she'd be Earth Queen and Fire Lord. "She would have had an easier time getting the throne before we knew she was having a child with Kuei."

"There would have been calls for her to step down and give you the throne."

"Calls she would have ignored. It's not like the world leaders could make her do anything, and Kuei seems content to let her do what she wants."

"That's what worries me. Doesn't he realize the risk she poses to him?"

"He knows what she's capable of, clearly, but he loves her." Who was Zuko to get in the way? He was sure that it was better that Azula raise her child with Kuei than alone.

Iroh insisted they speak to the sages right away, but the sages were busy, with wedding planning. Naturally, Fire Nation royals got married in the summer, in the palace, but this would be the first time in a very long time that the Fire Nation princess married a sovereign of another nation. The Earth Kingdom sages would expect their King to get married in Ba Sing Se, during the spring.

Summer was already here, so the sages suggested they get married in the Earth Kingdom. "We could send the fire lilies to the Earth Kingdom." They would have to time this carefully. The flowers only came into bloom for a few weeks each year.

"That gives us only a few weeks to prepare. Maybe we should have the wedding in the fall."

"She's going to be showing by then," a sage said.

"She's showing now. Who cares if she's slightly more pregnant?"

The sages started to argue.

"Maybe we should elope," Kuei suggested.

"NO!" yelled all of the sages.

When Iroh and Zuko approached, the situation was already heated.

"What are they arguing about?" Zuko questioned.

"Our wedding," Kuei told them. "They are debating having us getting married sooner so the fire lilies are in bloom vs. having more time to prepare.

Everyone would know she was pregnant. What difference did it make if her belly was bigger in the portrait.

Iroh realized he wasn't going to get a word in edge wise while they are arguing over Azula's big day. He left.

Kuei wrapped his arms around her. "I don't care where we get married or what flowers they put in the vases."

"Neither do I," Azula admitted. "Why don't we leave the sages to figure this one out?" Azula led Kuei upstairs.

* * *

Fong had his nose reset. He had to wear a facemask, how embarrassing! He left the doctor's office and wondered where the King had gone. "Have you seen Kuei?" the General asked a servant.

The servant blushed. "I think he's with the Princess."

The General was loath to think of what they were doing in there. He needed to consult the Council of Five. There had to be a way of stopping this marriage.

When Fong did make it home, he sought out General How, the leader of the Council of Five.

"Kuei's engaged to AZULA!" How had hoped Kuei would marry his daughter.

"And she's pregnant with his baby!" An heir was expected by late winter.

How frowned. If he didn't move fast, then Sozin's bloodline would be set to rule two nations.

"Should we convene the rest of the Council?" Fong inquired.

"No. I will need to speak with them, but first, I would like to have a word with the King."

"Of course."

* * *

When the King returned, he notified the sages of his impending nupitals.

His Head Sage was baffled, "You are marrying Princess Azula?"

"Yes. Her sages are already planning. I trust you can work with them effectively."

"Of course your highness. When is the wedding?"

"Oh, next month."

"NEXT MONTH!" The sage needed a moment to catch his breath. "Forgive my intrusion, but how long have you two been together?"

"We met the night of my masquerade ball."

"She was at the ball?"

"She and her friends snuck in," and Mai and Ty Lee were the sneaky ones who ate his ice cream.

"Is there a reason the wedding is so soon?"

"She's expecting our first child."

"Oh, right." The sage asked no more questions. Cutthroat weddings (the father holds his sword to the baby daddy's throat so he marries his daughter) occur all the time, even with royalty. The royal family would be getting a new member. This was cause for celebration, even if the circumstances are unusual. "I wish you both the best."

Unfortunately, not all of Kuei's interactions were as pleasant. Some of his nobles thought it was downright treasonous for him to marry Ozai's spawn, and they told him so. The King would not back down.

"I don't think you understand. When Long Feng brainwashed our citizens and forcibly controlled the city that was treasonous. When the Council of Five fell under his influence and failed to defend this city that was treasonous. When everyone in this room stood by and watched it happen instead of trying to notify me, so that I could actually run this kingdom that was treasonous.

This marriage has nothing to do with treason and everything to love with love. I love her. I'm going to marry her. We are going to have our own family, and together, we will unite this Kingdom and make it prosper again. For too long it has been fragmented by war, each city and town fending for itself while Ba Sing Se sat on its hands. Those days are over. I will not be a pushover king, and I will not let anyone tell me I can't choose my own bride. Any questions."

No. People were surprised and slightly scared of this new King Kuei. If people objected, they made sure to keep their objections silent when he was concerned, well other than General Fong. He was unrepentant in his disdain for the Princess. Little did he know, his lack of tact was why he would never get the promotion to the Council of Five that he dreamed he would get.

Back in the Palace, Iroh beseeched Zuko to get his sister and Kuei to sign a prenuptual agreement.

"I don't see how I can get them to sign anything," Zuko told his uncle. The two seemed happy to just get married and come what may.

"If something happens to Kuei or to you or both, your sister would control more than half the world."

"I understand that, but I don't think you realize how much Azula's changed."

* * *

Three months ago, he would have been terrified to hear that they were getting married, but the Azula he knew back in Ba Sing Se wouldn't have trained Aang to fight Ozai; she wouldn't have discouraged him from being vengeful; she wouldn't have stepped way from the throne.

"I believe her when she says being a mother matters more to her than politics."

To Iroh, this just seemed unfathomable. "Would you at least consult the Crown lawyers on this?"

"Fine," and Zuko did. The answer he received, however, would not please his uncle.

"They can't draft a prenuptial agreement for them." Zuko told Iroh.

"What do you mean they can't draft it?"

"Let me rephrase, they can draft it, but it will not be on terms that are favorable to you or me for that matter."

The lawyers had explained to him the recent trend where women challenged prenuptial agreements in court and won.

"Recently, wives or ex-wives have been challenging their prenuptial agreements in court and getting them thrown out. Historically, men would have their wives sign them to protect their assets in case of divorce or an early or suspicious demise.

However, judges have realized that the bargaining power between husbands and wives is often slanted towards the husband, so recently they have been throwing them out. In order to get an agreement to hold up, both sides have to have lawyers advocating his or her interests. It has to be a joint effort. If I send my lawyers in, then naturally, they would have to protect Azula's interests not mine.

In other words, any agreement they would draft would not be favorable to us under the circumstances."

"So if Kuei or Azula don't initiate the proceedings, the agreement can't happen."

"Exactly. If he initiates with his counsel, then I'll give Azula the Crown counsel, obviously or it could happen vice versa, but I don't see her starting these proceedings." Zuko couldn't picture Kuei doing it either.

Iroh knew this was a long shot but he went to see the Council of Five.

"Prince Iroh," General Sung greeted him. "What a surprise?"

Iroh expressed his concerns about his niece. "She's always taken after her father. I'm worried about the future of the Earth Kingdom and of the Fire Nation."

"As am I. We have tried talking to Kuei repeatedly, but he is adamant about this marriage, and even if it didn't go through, if she's carrying his son, then he will surely be the next king."

"Are you concerned that the child isn't his?"

"Oh no. If it's a girl, then whomever she marries will be Earth King someday."

"So a daughter wouldn't rule?"

"Officially no, but born Queens usually have a way of asserting power."

Or their regents assert it for them. "Do you think he would consider a prenuptial agreement?"

"We can talk to our lawyers about it, but he will do whatever he wants to do."

General Sung did approach the Crown lawyers about such an agreement. They told him, rightfully of course, that Kuei was their client. They could only draft an agreement if he wished it. They could not, in good faith, draft the agreement, so others could convince him to sign it.

When the General found Kuei, the man was trying to teach proper etiquette to his bear. "Start with the outside fork and work your way in."

The General never understood why Kuei acted like the bear was a son. If Azula bore him a son, maybe he would realize that Bosco is a bear.

"Your Highness."

"General Sung. What can we do you for today?"

"I had a conversation with Prince Iroh about your wedding."

"I didn't know he was back in town."

"He has a teashop here."

"Oh right, the Jasmine Dragon." Kuei had heard of it, but he had yet to visit.

"Yes, and anyway, he suggested that you and Azula consider a prenuptial agreement."

"A what?"

"You know, an agreement to pre-determine what would happen in the event of a divorce or if you died unexpectedly."

"Why would we pre-plan for a divorce? We may as well not get married if we didn't think it was going to work." Divorce was a rarity in the Earth Kingdom, not so much in the Fire Nation.

Sung tried to upsell the idea. "Well for one reason, you are both from different nations. Have you thought about what laws would govern your divorce should it happen or how to handle the line of succession considering your child will be eligible for both thrones."

Kuei seemed unimpressed. "We both have lawyers. If for some bizarre reason we divorced, I'm sure they could handle it, and the sages are dealing with the line of succession inquiries. I think it's most important that we have a united front, and I can't see that happening if I start our marriage with a contract full of legalese.

General Sung knew when the argument was lost, and he excused himself.

Iroh was disappointed, but not surprised.


	10. Chapter 10

The wedding was in less than a week. The servants were working around the clock, making sure everything was perfect from the décor to the dishware. Everything had been polished or buffed. The whole palace sparkled.

Guests were starting to make their way to the capital city. Inns were filling up as people came from the North Pole to the South Pole. Many arrived without an invitation, just hoping to get a glimpse of the new Earth Queen or pushing their political connections to try and get inside.

There hadn't been a royal wedding in the Kingdom since Kuei's parents had married, and they died so long ago.

Some, however, were very vocal in their disapproval. Like General Fong, they felt that Kuei should have married a noblewoman from their country, and Azula had no business being Earth Queen after what she had done. Kuei paid those people no mind, but Azula was more concerned, especially for her unborn child. She took it upon herself to train the guards to protect her husband. Instructing them as to how to look for signs of a coup and what to do about it.

Mai and Ty Lee came to help her get ready for the wedding. "Oh this is so exciting," Ty Lee beamed. "Your dress is so pretty."

Traditionally, women in the Earth Kingdom were green when they get married. In the Fire Nation, the women would wear black. Azula had a green and black dress. She wanted to pay homage to her roots and assure the crowd that she would be with the Earth Kingdom fully.

The dress was sleeveless as it was July and it showed off her generous cleavage quite nicely. There was a black bodice that went over the middle that did a decent job of "flattening" her baby bump and the dress flowed out from her waist, ending at her knees.

"It takes forever to get on," Azula complained.

"Which means it takes forever to take off," Mai teased.

Azula rolled her eyes.

"What are you wearing for your wedding night?"

Azula didn't care too much for lingerie. It made her think of her father. "Nothing?"

Mai snorted.

"Well ultimately," Ty Lee told her, "but you should start off with something more festive. How about a cute baby doll?"

"NO!" Azula said sharply. "I mean, no thank you." It's not like they knew what Ozai would make her do.

"Maybe a kimono," Mai tried.

"Fine, whatever." Azula handed them a bag of coins. "I'm sure you can find something suitable." She just wanted them to get out of her room. She needed to be alone. It was hard enough not being able to wear such things for her husband, like any normal wife would, without feeling dirty or ashamed. She didn't want to have to explain it with her friends.

Mai and Ty Lee took their exit. "I wonder why she hates baby dolls," Ty Lee said.

Mai had no idea. "She's always been peculiar."

The two girls went looking for something suitable for a bride.

* * *

On their way to the market, Mai heard some chanting from the street corner. "How many of you are happy with the King's decision to marry the woman who damn near destroyed this country. She proved she can out fox him and now she is set to be the most powerful woman in our nation, to produce the heir to our throne, I think not."

The two Fire Nation royals watched the man, taking note of his appearance, so they could report him.

"Who is this guy?" Ty Lee asked a street goer.

"He calls himself the Prophet."

"Does he always give soapbox speeches like this?"

"They just started a couple weeks ago."

It was unclear who stopped because they believed him and who was just curious.

Mai reported him to the closest guard.

They waited for the crowd to clear out before they detained him.

"I did nothing wrong!" he yelled as he was dragged against the Earth King.

"What's going on?" Kuei questioned.

"This man was reported for threatening your fiancée."

"I did no such thing!"

"What did you do?"

"I was just voicing my discontent for your decision to marry that murderous trollop. I never threatened her."

"Did you hear him threaten her?"

"No," they admitted.

"Did you have a witness who heard a threat?"

There hadn't been a direct threat. He just incited anger amongst the crowd.

"Release this man, but let this be a warning, if a hair is disturbed on my lover's head, you will be the first person they look for."

"Of course my Lord."

Azula came into the room. "Who was that guy?"

"Just a punk talking loudly on the street."

"He wasn't a threat, was he?"

"I don't think so. Lots of people run their mouths."

Azula made sure to have the Dai Li watch him, just in case.

* * *

Two days later, Azula was taking her bath when she heard a loud noise. Unsure of what it was, she told her servants that bath time was over. She got dried off, and when they started to put her robe on her, someone broke down the door. Three men in all black rushed into the room.

Unlike the earlier ambush on the Princess, this time, her mind was clear. She threw a fire whip at the closest man, burning him and causing the other two to back up. She drove them out of the room and down the hall where the guards had quickly come to detain them.

"Where's the King?"

"He's been secured already."

The men had managed to sneak into the palace and incapacitated the first guard who found them, but the guard later sent a signal with his earthbending so the other guards would know of the intrusion.

When Azula was reunited with her betrothed, he was very grateful that she was okay.

He pulled her into a kiss before she could say anything to him.

"You're going to open my robe." She said as he tried to get his hand under her breast.

"So?"

"We're not alone."

"Oh right." Kuei had forgotten about the guards watching over them.

"Who do you think did this?"

"I'm not sure. Some nobles were complaining, but it didn't sound serious."

The men insisted that the Prophet sent them.

"I should have jailed the scoundrel." Kuei ordered the man's arrest.

It was the middle of the night when they found him.

"He was hiding in a bunker!"

"I wasn't hiding. I live in that bunker."

"It's not your listed address."

"So what!"

"Didn't I tell you to leave my fiancée alone?"

"I did leave her alone. I haven't been anywhere near this palace."

"I meant the hit men you sent."

"I can't afford hit men," he insisted.

"He does look pretty raggedy," a guard commented.

* * *

General Fong came to lead the investigation.

Azula was wary of the man. He could have been involved.

"May I have a word with him," Azula requested of her suspect.

Kuei approved it over Fong's objection.

"Let's just get to the point," Azula said, once she was alone with the prophet. "You don't like me and you don't want me to be your queen. I don't care what you think about me, but I do care that someone sent hit men to either kill me, my fiancée or both of us, and I'm only going to ask you once, are you affiliated with them in anyway?"

He shook his head. "I just make speeches. I know my rights. I can speak about my disapproval as much as I want and it's not treason as long as I don't incite any violence."

"That's correct." Azula didn't think he did it. "Between you and me, I don't think you're behind this, but I think whoever is wants you to be his scapegoat."

He grunted. "That's a bunch of bull!"

"We may find ourselves on the same side temporarily."

The man grunted. "You're going to use me as bait aren't you."

"Very good."

Azula gave Kuei her assessment.

"You think the hit men are lying."

"Maybe they believe they were working for the Prophet, but he didn't send them."

"So what do I do?"

"Let Fong interrogate him anyway. See what he does."

"We want to see what he does with an innocent person?"

"Yes."

Kuei nodded, not really knowing where Azula was going with this.

* * *

They released the Prophet to General Fong. He interrogated the poor man for hours, demanding his confession. He threatened to have the man executed if he didn't confess.

He still wouldn't do it.

"Did he confess?" Azula asked the General.

"Not yet, but he will. I think we should take him to prison immediately."

"Where he can drum up more supporters," Azula said. "If we keep him in the dungeons here, he can't talk to anyone. He'll be isolated and his movement will be left without a leader."

Azula instructed the Dai Li to keep tabs on the Prophet. If someone attacked him, she wanted to be the first to know about it.

Later, Fong challenged the King. "It's hard for me to lead an investigation with Azula overturning my decisions."

"Perhaps if your decisions were wiser, she wouldn't be overturning them."

The would be hit men insisted that the Prophet had hired them.

"What does he look like?" Azula asked them.

"He was tall, I think," said one of them.

"He was thin I guess."

"He was bald and he had a mustache and a goatee."

When she got an artist to do a composite sketch she saw Long Feng.

"That's him, the Prophet!"

Azula rolled her eyes. She told Kuei right away.

"Long Feng has been masquerading as the Prophet. But how, he's supposed to be in jail?"

When they got to the prison, they learned that Long Feng escaped.

"How were we not notified," Azula demanded to know.

"He had the right papers. We thought you had pardoned him."

Someone forged Kuei's signature.

"So Long Feng has been out of jail for two weeks, which would have been enough time to brainwash the hit men, but who got him out of jail. Surely, he didn't make these forgeries himself."

"Whoever helped him had access to my sealed paper. This is an inside job."

Her wedding was only two days away and she suspected military involvement, but to hear there was a breach of security within the palace was even worse. She sought the consult of Mai and Ty Lee.

"I think we need the Avatar," Ty Lee said.

"You're right," Azula admitted. She should have called on him before, but she wanted to handle this herself. If she couldn't keep herself alive long enough to get married, then she shouldn't be Earth Queen.

* * *

Luckily, Aang had arrived early for the festivities. He had been with Katara and Sokka when he got an invitation to the palace.

"The Crown Princess wishes to speak to you. The matter is urgent," the guard informed him.

"Let's go."

The trio went to the palace where Azula had been waiting. "Thank you for coming on what is no notice. Earlier this week, three hit men tried to kill me while I was taking a bath. They weren't very good hit men, so I got away unscathed, but we believe they were brainwashed by Long Feng."

"How, he's in prison?" Sokka questioned.

"Someone forged release papers for him, and he escaped. He's been on the run for two weeks."

"He's OUT!" Sokka yelped.

"Yes. The Dai Li are looking for him now, but I must consider the possibility he may convince some of them to join him once more. There's more. The papers were written on official letterhead so either someone is helping Long Feng from the palace or whoever creates the official paper can't be trusted. I have him on surveillance, but he's unlikely to forge any more documents since Long Feng's escape has been discovered."

"Who's handling this case?"

"Officially, General Fong, but I do not trust him. I would not be surprised if he helped Long Feng escape. He's been a vocal opponent of me from the beginning. He could have swiped the paper while Kuei wasn't looking, and he is trying to convince us that this political dissident, the Prophet, is responsible, but he does not have the resources for such an operation."

"So he's a fall guy," Katara said.

"Or a scapegoat."

"I think the first thing we need to do is find Long Feng. Is Zuko bringing his guards with him to the wedding?"

"Yes."

"Then maybe some of them should guard you too, in case your guards here are in on it."

Azula gulped. "I think that would be for the best."

Zuko was not happy to learn that his sister had been targeted. "I should have been told as soon as it happened." Azula always did have to keep her secrets. He sent some of the royal guard ahead of him to ensure her safety.

They arrived the next day only to get flack from the military.

"What are they doing here?"

"My brother was concerned about my safety after the ambush and discovery of Long Feng's escape. They're here until the wedding is over."

"He has no right to …"

"When it comes to his family, he has every right. Kuei's already approved this, so you best get out of the way."

* * *

Aang, Katara and Sokka, split up, each of them with a sketch of Long Feng, looking to see if anyone had seen him. The first day, they came up empty, but on the second day, Aang found a woman who said he bought food from her a few days ago. It looked like it was a lot for one person to carry and I said my son could help him, but he said he lived close by and he started walking that way."

Aang started visiting each house. The first three he saw just had families living in them. The fourth house, however, had its blinds closed and was locked. Something about it seemed odd.

Aang used his earthbending to look inside. There was a person on the floor. Aang went inside. "It smells horrid!"

On the ground was Long Feng, with a knife wound to the chest. "Someone wanted to make sure he didn't talk."

After finding Katara and Sokka, Aang returned to the palace.

The guards let him in to see Azula who had been with her husband.

"Any news?"

"Long Feng is dead. Someone stabbed him."

Azula sighed. "Whoever hired him is covering his tracks. He's getting desperate, which is bad."

"Maybe you should postpone the wedding," Aang suggested, "until you catch this guy."

"Our wedding might be our best chance to catch him," Azula said. "He doesn't want it to happen. If we give him more time, he'll just try again."

Kuei had a thought. "Maybe we should spring a trap."

"What did you have in mind?" Azula asked him.

Kuei changed their honeymoon plans.

"After the dinner," Kuei told his advisors, "Azula and I are going to take a private sky ship to Ember Island."

"What about your wedding night?"

"We'll be celebrating it in the air, you know, joining the km high club."


	11. Chapter 11

The wedding was tomorrow.

As customary, Azula and Kuei spent this night apart.

Kuei expected to go to bed early, but Sokka, Aang and Bumi appeared. "What brings you all here?"

"It's time for your bachelor party!" Sokka had planned it.

"I'm not going to get in trouble am I?" Kuei didn't want an angry bride tomorrow.

"You can look as long as you don't touch."

They took him out to dinner at a brewpub that had a special on burgers and fries; they even offered veggie burgers and fries.

"We're going to need two pitchers of beer," Sokka said. "He's getting married tomorrow."

The crowd cheered as the waitresses brought them lots of beer.

Kuei wasn't much of a drinker. He had alcohol on formal occasions, but that was about it.

Aang wasn't either. "We didn't drink at the temple."

Bumi was throwing them down. "This is going to be awesome!" After 100 years of fighting a war, Bumi was excited for his golden years.

Once they were full of food and drink, it was time for the strippers.

Aang was worried about getting in trouble with Katara.

Sokka didn't seem so concerned about Suki.

Sokka was surprised to see Jun there. "I didn't think I'd see you here."

"What? Girls can't enjoy strippers too."

"I mean they can but …"

"Just teasing. I have a bounty who comes here on Friday nights."

Her shirshu was hiding under the table, sniffing around for their bounty.

"Good luck," Sokka said as the lights dimmed.

"Our first performer will be Kayla. She's from the Southern Water Tribe and she likes men who are aggressive."

A woman with brown hair and blue eyes came out wearing a very skimpy blue top and what might have constituted a skirt. She writhed around the stage as men cheered her on, tossing coins onto the stage.

* * *

While the men were getting out their last hurrah, Azula was in the palace, Mai and Ty Lee were with her.

"I can't believe you're getting married tomorrow," Ty Lee said to her.

"And you're turning 15 on Sunday."

"I'm just trying to survive this weekend."

"Oh you will!" Ty Lee laughed. "These fools are messing with the wrong princess."

Suki, Katara and Toph were all in a room together.

"Where did the guys go?" Toph questioned.

"Sokka said they needed to talk to Kuei about something," Katara said.

"Who are they?"

"Him, Aang and Bumi."

"If it's about their security, they would have talked to Azula," Toph said.

"How much you wanna bet it was a bachelor party?" Suki added.

"If they're seeing strippers, I'm gonna kill Aang," Katara said.

Suki was upset too.

Toph only laughed. "Why get mad when you could get even instead?"

The three girls decided to go to the palace and get the princess.

They found Azula and her friends in a massage train. Azula had been in the front, but then they turned around, so now she was in the back and Mai was purring. "This is so fucking good," she growled.

Toph knocked on the door. "Princess, we're kidnapping you!"

Katara hissed. "You can't say that when the palace is on high alert."

"Calm down Sugar Queen!"

Ty Lee opened the door. "What's going on?"

"The guys took Kuei to a bachelor party, so we decided to take you out too!"

"I can't even drink," Azula said.

"You don't have to be drunk to behave badly!"

"That's a good point," Ty Lee said.

"Let's go!"

They found a free wine tasting. Azula only ate the cheese while her friends started downing glasses of well anything they could get.

"I love mead," Toph said as she took another swig of it.

Ty Lee favored white wine.

Mai favored the red.

Suki drank it all and Katara wondered if someone should stay sober other than the princess.

"Have a drink," Mai shoved one in her hand. "Azula's going to have to put up with our drunkenness tonight."

"Sir, I need more cheese!" Azula ate everything in sight.

The man was astounded. The platter had been for six, and Azula killed it alone.

"This is going to be fun," Suki said.

* * *

After Kayla came Tasha who was from the Earth Kingdom. She was more suggestive than the first girl, often getting off the stage and dancing very close to the patrons.

Sokka cheered loudly, embarrassing Aang who thought he shouldn't draw attention to the famous group.

"Is that an Avatar I see?"

Everyone started cheering.

"Oh no!"

She came up to Aang and sat on his lap. "Hello Mr. Avatar."

He froze as she danced on top of him. This is terrifying!

"Katara's going to kill him," Kuei whispered to Bumi.

Just as the girl was returning to the stage, Jun's shirshu smelled something. Their target just came into the club.

Jun decided to wait until he was drunk and then take him down.

The third and final girl came out. She was clearly from the Fire Nation and her nickname was the Princess.

"Did they hire an Azula impersonator?" Sokka questioned. The girl had dark hair, gold eyes and very nice curves, making her quite reminiscent of the Princess.

Kuei hid, hoping she wouldn't see him.

"I hear we have a groom in the audience," the girl said.

"Oh crap!"

"Kuei! Kuei!" the crowd roared as she made her way over to him.

He gulped as she sat down on his table. "Are you looking forward to your big day?"

"I am."

"WOOT!" the people yelled.

"Then lets make sure you have a good night too. It will clear your mind."

"My mind is sufficiently clear," he croaked before she straddled him, her chest all but suffocating him.

As she performed her ministrations, Kuei tried to think of anything not sexy: dead babies, Martians attacking, being thrown in jail. Well actually, Azula was pretty sexy when she conquered the city. There was something about her voice and her lust for power that was a serious turn on.

"Someone's a big boy," she commented to a shocked table.

This is bad, he thought.

Not so bad as what happened next.

Jun decided her target was good after he took his third shot in a row and she sent her shirshu to block him in. He started to back up when she grabbed him. "You're going back to jail!"

He punched her, stunning her but she was able to give chase as he ran. Aang saw the man running and started to chase him.

They ran into the street, where the criminal crashed right into a pregnant bride.

Angry, Azula chased him down and knocked him out. "How dare you just push a pregnant woman out of your way? Didn't your mother teach you any manners?"

"Azula?" Aang questioned.

"Yes, who is this man?"

"He's my bounty," Jun said. "I just made 500 coins." She tied up his arms and hauled him out of there.

"What are you doing here?"

"My friends are taking me to some trashy club, but I seem to have gotten separated from them."

Ty Lee appeared. "There you are. Aang, what are you doing here?"

"I am… well."

The other girls appeared.

"You better not have been at the strip club," Katara said.

"It wasn't my fault!"

"Why do you have glitter on your neck?"

"I didn't do anything I swear!"

She grabbed him by the collar and demanded he take her to this club.

* * *

The group got there to see Sokka dancing on stage with twins. He was hammered.

Kuei was in the corner when he saw his fiancée. "She's gonna kill me."

He tried to slouch, but he's rather tall.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Azula asked with a smirk as she sat on his lap.

"I am now," he said as he kissed her.

She brushed against his leg. "Were you having fun?"

"I didn't …"

"I know. Maybe we should have some fun while Katara and Suki beat up their boyfriends."

"I like the way you think," he said as they looked for an empty room.

In the back, the strippers charge for private dances. Azula found an empty room, and they went inside of it.

About ten minutes later, a dancer went to use the room and it was locked. "What gives?"

The bouncer started banging on the door.

"Out of all of the childish and immature things you've done," Katara scolded her brother

"I hope children don't come here," Sokka retorted.

"How could you be so thoughtless? They're getting married tomorrow."

"A bachelor party never hurt anybody. Kuei is having a great time. He's …" Sokka looked around. "We lost the Earth King."

They all started searching for him and Azula when they got to the back.

"You have to pay to come back here," the bouncer told him.

"We're looking for King Kuei. We lost him," Aang admitted.

The bouncer let them through where they saw another bouncer banging on a door. "Who's in there?"

Katara made a water key and they opened the door.

They found Azula, on top of her betrothed, "That was fun," Azula said to him. "I think I approve of bachelor parties."

Their hair was a mess and their clothes disheveled, giving even more evidence to their tryst. They got kicked out of the club, but no one minded at that point.

"That was a great time!" Kuei said as they headed home. Sokka and Aang were still in the polar doghouse, but all would be forgiven tomorrow.

The girls went one way and the boys went the other.

* * *

The morning of the wedding, Azula's servants came to get her ready. She had been sound asleep before they knocked on her door. "What?"

"Princess, it's time."

They bathed her and dressed her, wrapping a towel around her dress before doing her hair and make up.

Across the palace, a different group of servants was getting Kuei ready. "Ow!" he complained as they plucked his eyebrows.

"Just one more,' she said, even though there were several more.

"Pain is the price we pay for beauty," one servant told him.

"Can't I just be pain free and ugly?"

"Not with a bride as pretty as yours."

Touche.

Sokka had a killer hangover. "I feel like shit!"

"Me too," Aang complained.

They stumbled to get ready for the wedding. "I wonder if Kuei can even see straight right now. I can't."

Bumi was fine. "You don't live to be my age and not learn to drink!"

Zuko and Iroh had missed out on the nighttime festivities. "Why does Sokka look like hell?"

"My guess is a bachelor party," Iroh said.

"Oh. He looks ready to pass out."

Suki went to check on her boyfriend. "Drink this water and try not to say anything embarrassing!

"I'm too hungover to speak."

They made their way to their seats.

The Head Sage of the Fire Nation would be performing the wedding ceremony. The Head Sage of the Earth Kingdom would be doing Azula's crowning.

The flower girl was some nobleman's daughter. She threw the moon peach blossoms. Bouquets of fire lilies adorned the outdoor terrace.

The King was ready to get married. He just needed his bride.

* * *

Azula never got stage fright. Right now, she had it. "I can't do this!"

"What?" Mai hissed at her. "Just go get married!"

"I'm going to be the queen of a country I fought against my whole life."

"Well duh!" Ty Lee told her.

"That's really scary!"

"What's wrong with her?"

They struggled with what to do when Lo and Li appeared.

"Princess, we didn't miss it!"

"Lo? Li?" They survived, and they came back for her.

"We ran when we heard you escaped your father, and we were on Kyoshi Island when we learned of your wedding, so we rushed to get here."

"Oh you look gorgeous."

"He's going to be so happy."

The twins took over for Mai and Ty Lee, letting them take their places while they got Azula ready.

"Oh you're going to be a fabulous Queen," Lo assured her.

"You have the poise and the charisma. You just need to take a deep breath and be yourself."

"Your King fell in love with you just as you are."

"You are so lucky. Most royals don't get to marry for love."

They managed to get Azula out the door, and Zuko escorted her down the aisle.

* * *

The Head Sage started. "Today, we are gathered here to celebrate King Kuei's marriage to his lovely bride Azula, Crown Princess of the Fire Nation. They come from two different worlds, and hopefully, those worlds will come together harmoniously as a new era of peace awaits us.

If anyone has a reason why these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace."

Iroh really wished this wasn't happening. He wouldn't have come at all if his friends hadn't all but made him. Bumi told him to, "stop being such a baby. Sometimes you just have to take your place as a Prince and keep your reservations to yourself. You will embarrass your nephew and the entire Kingdom if you stay home and pout."

Iroh heeded his friend's advice and sat in the box for the Fire Nation royal family as expected. He also held his tongue.

Kuei recited his vows first.

"When we first met, it seemed too good to be true, seeing each other across a crowded room, sharing a wonderful dance before you disappeared into the night. In fairytales, the prince finds his princess, usually with some strange turn of events after previously having bad luck."

He put her wedding band on her finger. "When I think about us, I see a fairy tale. The misfortune along the way was well worth it because we get the happy ending. I can't think of anyone I'd rather share my life with or any who I can trust with my kingdom more."

Azula's hands were shaking. She gripped his hand tightly. "I always thought I'd marry for politics, that my father would pick some general, and I'd marry him because that's what my nation needed of me. I thought the night we met would be my only free night, the calm before the storm as it were.

Little did I know that would be the night that saved my life. I was headed down a path of destruction and misdeeds, and it started to change when I met you. It didn't sink in right away, but I'm glad it finally did."

She put a ring on his finger. "I'm ready for a new start, a new life, with you. Nothing would make me happier than for us to make the Earth Kingdom as great as it can be."

They said their "I dos," and he kissed her in front of a cheering crowd.

He took her hand in his as he led her out of the procession. Azula never thought she would be one to cry at her own wedding, but she was so filled with joy it was overwhelming. She once feared that she would never find love, but love isn't something you find; it's something you do.


	12. Chapter 12

AN: The wedding scene is long, so this is the first part.

* * *

They had a cocktail hour (also with mocktails) before Azula's crowning ceremony. They didn't want people to feel stuck in one spot for too long. There were also snacks.

"MEAT!" Sokka said as he filled his plate. Of course he took the sausage skewers over the fruit cups or the veggie wraps.

Aang took a fruit cup. "I'm so glad they had food before the dinner." Aang missed breakfast.

People ate, drank and found restrooms before the second ceremony.

Azula just wanted to be held. "You look so amazing," Kuei whispered against her skin.

"My boobs are sore," she complained. They were starting to grow.

"Maybe I could help you with that." His hands started to move up her sides.

She started to moan under his gentle touch.

"You could at least wait until you get inside," her brother chided.

"You're such a spoil sport."

"How was your bachelor party?" Zuko questioned.

Kuei laughed. "It was a hot mess. What else could you expect when Sokka planned it?"

Azula snorted. "Seeing Katara yell, that was funny."

"You were there?" Zuko questioned.

"I ended up running into them on the street. I wasn't invited either."

"Did you have a bachelorette party?"

"They got drunk and I ate a lot. It was fine."

* * *

Iroh was sitting by the fountain. The Prince was not exactly thrilled, but it would be politically unwise to skip the feast, which meant he'd be here for several more hours.

Piando came out to see him. "Why aren't you with your family?"

"I doubt she'd be very happy to see me," Iroh said.

"With that glum attitude, I wouldn't blame her." Piando sat next to him. "I know you didn't expect this, none of us did, but this could be the opportunity for something good."

"Do you really think anything good will come from this marriage?"

Piando shrugged. "Kuei seems to have gotten a backbone now."

"When it comes to her, he's very defensive." He wouldn't even hear of a pre-nuptial agreement. The Council of Five and Iroh both tried to get him to consider it, but he said there was no reason. He trusted Azula completely.

"At least he's learning how to defend. Who knows? Maybe this niece or nephew will be awesome. You can't judge people on their parents."

Iroh frowned. He had a point. "Am I just being a big baby?"

"No, but you're heading in that direction," Piando told him. "I don't have the history with Azula that you do, but I do know that Zuko was able to change and become more than what Ozai wanted for him. What makes you so sure Azula didn't change for the better too?"

It was Iroh's pride that kept him from deciding otherwise. He had been the one to guide Zuko. He had been the one to save him. He had deemed Azula incapable of redemption but what if he had been wrong all along? What if all she needed was someone to give her a proper chance? What if he wasn't as influential in Zuko's life as he thought he was? Maybe neither of them needed him.

Iroh realized life was too short to hold onto past grudges. He got up and went to go find the others.

* * *

Azula was sitting with her husband, her brother, Mai and Ty Lee.

"I have to admit, I didn't think I would see you ever getting married," Zuko said, "but I think this will be good for you."

"When are you and Mai going to tie the knot?"

"I um …" He started stammering.

"You're mean," Ty Lee said with a laugh.

"Calm down Zuko. I promise to give you five years to get married and produce an heir before I try to kill you."

"A grace period? You're so generous."

"I know right. Ozai would have probably had you killed right now."

"Did you tell him you were getting married?"

"No, but Aang told him I was pregnant during their duel to distract him."

"What?" Zuko said. He had missed this when Aang told the group at dinner after the war ended.

"Ozai was so shocked, Aang just trapped him in dirt while his mouth hung open."

Zuko started cracking up. "Azula saved the world by getting pregnant."

"Well, I do like to keep things interesting."

"Does this make me a war hero?" Kuei asked teasingly.

"I'll be sure to put it on your epitaph."

Azula seemed different than Iroh remembered. She was relaxed, almost jovial.

"Congratulations," Iroh said to the couple.

"That almost sounded sincere," Azula said coldly.

Kuei tried to encourage her. "Maybe today could be a new start for all of us."

"Are you really that naïve?" He spent the last month trying to stop this wedding from happening

"Yes."

Azula knew she would never rid Kuei of his optimism or his ability to forgive. If she had, they wouldn't be together now. She grunted. "Well, fine then. Did you have a nice flight?"

"It was faster than I thought it would be."

"We repurposed the battle sky ships into private charters. They are refitting some of them to make them luxury charters. The investment was a little steep, but I think the wealthier nobles will pay a small fortune to have something to brag about."

"You just took the weapons out and started charging people to go places?"

"Yes. Now that the war is over, all kinds of people want to travel and visit places, look for relatives."

Iroh thought for a moment. "That's quite brilliant."

"I thought so," Azula said haughtily. "The Fire Nation has the first set of sky ships available to the public, well the very wealthy public. The Earth Kingdom is right behind them. Our nations," she said as she looked at her brother, "are going to make a lot of money."

"Azula had some great ideas on how to repurpose all of the capital assets we have from the war. I was going to auction things off, and we still might do that with smaller equipment, but Azula pointed out we could make much more money renting things than we could selling them once."

"We'll have to pay a lot for insurance and maintenance costs, but it will be much easier to upgrade people once we have the different price lines set."

"What do you mean upgrade them?" Iroh asked her.

"Right now, only the very wealthy can afford to fly whenever they feel like it, like the Bei Fongs. Other families, Mai's is a good example, can afford to fly sometimes, but can't just wake up one day and say I want to go to Gaoling. They'll go broke if they did that.

Even further, some families, let's say Sokka's for example, can't afford to fly on a private ship at all.

As more providers enter the market, the price of flights will go down. Mai's family will be able to afford to fly a lot. Sokka's family will be able to buy a ticket. The very wealthy, however, like the Bei Fongs, will still want to show off their money, so they will pay for luxury ships, the fastest engines, room to nap, and cocktails.

Eventually, Mai's family will want to fly on such a ship a couple of times, but it will still cost too much to use regularly. To try and get this market, the companies will produce a business class that has more room, but not as many cocktails. It's much easier to convince Mai's family to ride on a luxury ship once or twice than it is to convince them to sink a lot of money on owning a bare bones ship, which they'll have to insure and maintain. We'll get money from a lot more people using rentals and convincing them to upgrade, then we would selling them the ship once."

"My fire lily is so smart," Kuei said as he kissed her.

Azula really had changed.

"Princess," her servant approached her. "It's time for your crowning."

"So it is. Shall we?"

They made it back to the terrace.

* * *

The Earth Kingdom Sage welcomed everyone back and announced that they would be crowning Princess Azula.

After reading the sacred rights, he asked Azula if she was ready to pledge her loyalty to the Earth Kingdom.

"I am."

"Then please kneel."

"Today, we welcome Azula as our Queen. As the mother of our nation, we wish her the best." He placed a crown on her head.

"All hail Earth Queen Azula."

"Thank the spirits for more booze!" Sokka drank to try and forget about his awful hangover.

"They sure now how to keep it coming," Aang said as he grabbed a cocktail.

"It's not an Earth Kingdom wedding unless you crawl out of here," Bumi said as he grabbed two drinks. "The last time the King got married, there was so much booze that the wedding celebration went on for three days. The couple had long left, but people just kept eating and drinking."

"Is that the plan this year?" Aang asked with a worried face.

"I'm hoping they make it to five!"

Sokka snorted. "This gonna be ratchet!"

Toph was off to a good start. "This gin is good!"

"Shouldn't you slow down?" Katara cautioned.

"Don't rain on my parade, Sugar Queen!"

"How strong are those drinks?" Suki questioned.

Katara smelled one. "They seem strong."

"Maybe I should go find Sokka before he drinks himself into a stupor."

"Too late," Toph hissed at her. "Snoozles gonna be drunk!"

* * *

In a private parlor in the back, some of the wealthier nobles indulged in some opium. There were also massages and other comforts offered by some of the prettiest concubines in the city. It was a reward for supporting the King.

"Kuei's father would have been here if he were alive," one noble commented.

"He was here at his wedding, little scamp!"

"His wife did love him so. She had to in order to deal with his behavior."

"This is so good," Lao said of his back massage. He only wanted the massage, but he woman had tried to offer more.

"How do you think this whole situation's going to pan out?" one noble asked him.

"I think that the Earth Kingdom is going to make a lot of money. Azula is brilliant."

"You are excited."

"Oh yes. Long live the Earth Queen."

They slowed down on the hard liquor, only offering wine and beer during the dinner and bringing plenty of bread and water. This got people to sober up a bit before they hit the heavy drinking later.

The Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom royals sat as one family tonight.

Mai and Ty Lee sat with them, as Mai was Zuko's date and Ty Lee well they're a boxed set.

"This food is so good!" Ty Lee was very happy with her spicy chicken and roasted vegetables.

"We took some of our favorite dishes and made different courses with them," Kuei told her. "Every dish has some aspect of Earth Kingdom cuisine and something from the Fire Nation."

"This grilled peaches are delightful," Mai told them.

"I've never seen any of this stuff," Fong commented about his dishes.

"I've never seen anything," Toph retorted to her father's chagrin.

"I mean who puts all tofu and meat on the same plate."

"I think that's common in the Fire Nation," Poppy said.

"These dishes aren't quite one nation or the other," Lao said. "They seem to have mixed them together."

Fong grumbled as the others ate their food.

* * *

Sokka was glad to see meat and he shoveled whatever else was on the plate in his mouth too. "This is so much food!"

"I think it's to absorb the booze," Hakoda said to him.

"And I need that right now. I had some drinks!"

Suki shook her head. "Don't embarrass me."

"I won't. I know not to say what I'm thinking, like how did Azula's boobs get so huge!"

"SOKKA!"

"Oops!"

Bato snorted. "You're a fool."

Most of his misfortune is his own doing!

* * *

Aang was excited that they made a 7 course vegetarian dinner for him. "This looks great."

Katara thought the dishes were good, "although they're a little hot." Katara grabbed some bread. Luckily, they had plenty of baskets full of bread.

"Well she is from the Fire Nation," Teo said. "I hear they put hot sauce on everything."

"Azula puts it in her juice. She said it's good for nausea," Aang told them.

"No thanks," Katara said as she ate her vegetables.

* * *

After their meal, it was time for their speeches.

Mai went first. "Since Azula has two best friends, she has to suffer through two speeches about her tonight."

"Azula's always been one to get what she wants. I remember my first adventure with her. She wanted dim sum, but we had a field trip for history class. We got in the carriage, went to the museum, and as soon as our guide's head was turn, the three of us slipped out the back and went to dim sum.

They searched the entire museum from top to bottom looking for her. They checked with the police, with the hospital and even with the Royal Guard. Meanwhile, the three of us were competing over who could eat the most pine-taro puffs.

Finally, after I think it was almost two hours of eating, Azula returns to the museum, no excuses or apologies. The aide exhausted after searching for her said, 'where did you go?

'I went to brunch,' she said as she took her place next to our peers like it was no big deal.

There are a few morals to learn from this story. One: never bet Azula on who can eat the most pine-taro puffs."

[Crowd laughs]

"Two, always assume that Azula has a plan that you don't know about."

[More laughter]

"And three, life with Azula is never boring. I wish Azula and Kuei a lot of happiness, and he's going to need some luck."

Ty Lee went next.

"Since Mai summed up our experiences at the royal academy pretty well, I'm going to tell a different story, one about a cat named Shoo.

Azula came to my house one day, which was a rare occasion, since I have six sisters, and they all fight over everything. We were playing outside, and this little tabby came out from the woods.

It liked Azula. She was not amused.

[laughter]

She told the cat to shoo.

It didn't.

She pretended to kick it.

Didn't care.

She threw a fireball at it, and it ran away just to run back and pounce on her foot.

Reluctantly, she took the cat home, where he continued to follow her and pester her for the next two years.

She tried giving the cat to Zuko. She tried leaving at the royal academy. She even tried hiding it in her uncle's room, hoping he'd take it from her, but somehow, she always ended up with this cat.

One day, the cat disappeared. No one knew where it went. Azula said she was relieved, but I could tell she missed her mandated friend. After the war was over, I decided to try and find this cat, and I did. As it turns out, he met a female cat and had a family.

Ty Lee came out with a cage. "I have his son here." She handed the cage to Azula. "So here's your cat!" Inside the cage was an adorable orange tabby.

The audience was in hysterics.

Azula rolled her eyes. "I'm the cat woman, aren't I?"

Kuei grinned. "Oh he's so cute!"

* * *

Bumi gave the speech for King Kuei. "Some fool thought it would be a good idea for me to give this speech. I have no idea why, but I'm here, so you all are stuck with what I'm going to say.

[crowd laughs]

I remember when Kuei was born. We didn't have very good transportation from Omashu to Ba Sing Se, and it took me five days or so to get to the palace. Apparently, I missed his first ceremony or whatever. He was like three days old at the time and what does a three year old really need a ceremony for anyway.

His father yelled at me for missing it, and I told him if he knew how to connect his cities, I wouldn't have missed it. We had some choice words for each other. He told me I was a cretin, and I told him he was a dumbass. As you can tell, having two kings in one nation was totally an awesome idea.

[Crowd chuckles]

As time went on, there would be celebrations for Kuei's other milestones: his naming ceremony (which I don't know if it's a milestone since he didn't do anything), a party for when he first learned to earthbend, a party for the first time he ignored his mother."

The audience was guffawing.

"All right, maybe I made the earthbending party up. Anyway, the point is he was celebrated for doing completely normal things, I got yelled at every time I missed a celebration.

When Kuei was eight, he became the king. This ceremony, I actually made it to and it was a hot mess. People were so drunk that they were falling down by the end of the night and sleeping on the floor. I challenge each and every one of you to get that drunk because that's how Earth Kingdom celebrations should be.

Like most eight year olds, Kuei liked model trains and action figures of heroes not running a government or planning for war. Needless to say, his advisors ran the country in his steed. I always wondered what kind of king he would grow up to be.

Years later, his underlings continued to run the country, leaving him in the darkness while they focused on Ba Sing Se and ignored the rest of the country. I didn't realize this and I thought, wow he's quite the absentee ruler.

[crowd snickers]

And from then until now we had some brainwashing conspiracy followed by a coup, all normal affairs for the Earth Kingdom. To make it even more boring, the people who overthrew the Fire Nation were largely the same people who overthrew Kuei. Apparently Azula just likes to throw people out."

[more laughter]

Now here we are. The war is over. A new age is coming for this nation and the world, and I must say, for a guy who was left in the dark, he just made the smartest move he could have made. They say behind every smart man, there is a smarter woman. I don't think there is a smarter woman that could be with you right now.

To a happy marriage and to a prosperous Earth Kingdom.

Cheers."


	13. Chapter 13

This is part II of the wedding. I think part III will be the end of the wedding scene (but not the story).

* * *

Bumi took his seat. People applauded, and they started to get ready for the couple's first dance.

The kitty was very happy to get out of his cage.

Azula tried to hand him to Kuei but he immediately jumped back into her arms.

"He's just like his father," Azula complained.

"What did you name him?" Kuei asked of the older cat.

"Shoo!" she yelled at the tabby.

"Haha. He looks more like a Trouble to me."

"Trouble it is," she said as the cat fell asleep.

He got put in a basket, and the couple danced. The music was classical. The Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation had very similar formal dances as they predated their war.

Kuei spun her around and pulled her into his arms. "Are you nervous about tonight?"

"Do you mean the sex or the likely attempt on our lives?"

"Either I guess, but I mostly meant the attempt on our lives." Kuei dipped her.

"I doubt we'll die tonight, though I hope we don't get seriously injured either. I am looking forward to the other part of our night."

"Me too," he said.

The next dance was the father daughter dance. Since Ozai was in jail, Zuko had been set to step in, but Iroh asked if he could do it instead. Zuko went to go canoodle with Mai.

"I hope you don't mind the substitution."

"You're a better dancer than Zuzu. He kept stepping on my toes when we practiced."

"Well, hopefully Mai wore steel tipped shoes."

"She'd be better off just gluing a tack to the top of them."

"You two were such pranksters."

"Ty Lee helped."

"Yeah, but she was the fall guy most of the time."

Azula couldn't deny that. "When Mai broke Ursa's vase with her throwing knife, she said it was Ty Lee. When mother confronted her, she started balling, even though she was innocent, and mother said it was fine.

When mother left, Ty Lee stopped crying and said, 'works every time.' It was easy to blame stuff on her when she would just fake cry her way out."

Iroh chuckled. "To think she's secretly manipulating people under that bubbly exterior."

It's probably her exterior bubbles that allow her to get away with it. "Looks can be deceiving."

* * *

When the dance ended, the floor was open to everyone. Sokka and Bumi wanted to make an announcement. The staff asked Kuei if it was okay.

He looked to his wife who said, "Whatever they're planning, it will be a hot mess."

"Then I guess we should say yes."

Sokka got on stage. "DJ Sokka and King Bumi are here to make sure this party stays awesome!"

"What the hell is he doing?" Suki questioned.

Katara looked away.

"King Kuei, I'm challenging you to an Earth King dance off," Bumi declared.

The crowd got wild.

"Do you accept?" Sokka questioned.

"I do."

People started chanting either Kuei or Bumi. It was hard to tell which one since the vowels in their name sounded the same.

Sokka went next. "Queen Azula, I'm calling you out! Are you ready to face DJ Sokka in karaoke?"

Azula shook her head. "I suppose I am."

A jazz band came to the stage. Apparently, the Freedom Fighters turned to music after Jet died.

"Let's boogie!"

Almost everyone went to dance. Unlike the formal dances, the casual dances of the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom were quite different. The Fire Nation's more "hip" dances were salsa and mambo. The Earth Kingdom's were more like grinding and twerking.

The Queen's sultry moves took many by surprise. It was amazing that she could do those moves in her seemingly unforgiving dress and most of them had never seen her at a party. As Kuei and Azula, twisted and turned together, it was clear that they had embraced the Earth Kingdom tradition of indulgent weddings, and the crowd followed suit.

Haru asked Ty Lee to dance. The acrobat happily said yes and they started to move. The young people started to couple up. Sokka was with Suki, Katara with Aang, and Zuko with Mai.

The Fire Lord had not been one for social events, but Mai said he was going to have to get used to making appearances, "and try to look lively." He grunted as she spun around.

* * *

One of the Fire Nation guards asked Toph to dance. His shift didn't start for another two hours.

"What's your name?"

"Chin."

She reached up and felt a mask. "What's this on your face?"

"I'm a guard. It's my mask."

"Why do you wear masks?"

"They told us it was to make us more united, since we all look the same, but I think it's because they make people nervous."

Toph lifted it off his head and felt his face. "You have nice cheek bones." They sat high, and he had a strong jawline.

He asked her how she was liking the party.

"I have to admit, Princess SpitFire knows how to throw a party." Toph's tone was unapologetic, maybe even defiant of her new sovereign. The Earthbender would not be reeled in by anyone.

Lo and Li were in the back room trying out the opiates. They had been in many opium dens in their day; in their youth, they were there to please Azulon. Now they could sit back and relax with a smoke.

"How do you know the couple?" one of the nobles asked Li.

"We were Azula's advisors," she told him.

"Our baby's all grown up," Lo said happily as she passed her sister the pipe.

They started to tell stories of their two years training the Princess.

"When Ozai made her his heir apparent, he wanted her to focus more on learning how to be a sovereign," Li started.

"We taught her diplomacy and how to gently persuade others to agree with her."

"You taught her how to be a honey trap?" a man asked them baffled.

"Oh no, how to bribe people," also how to blackmail them.

"We also did some of her advanced firebending work." She had already learned to throw lightening, but they taught her how to master the art, controlling bolt size and they helped her improve her release technique so it took her less time to throw.

While they boasted about their "baby," Ozai wasted away in prison. He found out through the gossip in the cellblock that his daughter would be marrying the Earth King. Each of his traitorous children had a country to rule while he got a 2x3m cell.

Some of the other prisoners mocked him. "His kids own half the world and he can't even get a bigger cell."

Ozai had no idea when he had lost control of Azula. He wondered if it was that one time he started choking her during sex and he knocked her unconscious. He said he was sorry and she claimed not to remember the incident. She just woke up in a hospice bed. Maybe she did remember. Maybe she had been waiting for her chance to drive a dagger into his back.

For five years he had been invincible. No matter how brutal his crime, there were never any consequences. He wondered if his misdeeds had stacked up while he wasn't looking if the world had been keeping tally until he had a weakness.

"You think she'll send you any wedding cake," another cellmate laughed at him.

Ozai slammed against the metal bars. He would be beating the shit out of that guy later, just wait until gym the next day.

* * *

The waiters took drink orders on the floor, hastening the process of getting shitfaced. The guests moves became more risqué and salacious.

Toph was twerking on the dance floor. Apparently, she had learned to dance at one of the parties thrown after a rumble.

She was dancing too close to Chin for Sokka's liking. The warrior shooed the guard away from her.

"What are you doing, Snoozles?"

"You are too young to be dancing like that, with him. It was obscene."

"Look around you. This whole party's obscene." All around them, couples were dancing salaciously on one another, drunk and intending to get even drunker. This was quite a raucous affair.

The duo argued.

Bumi got to the stage and announced, "It's time for a dance off."

The crowd cheered and cleared the middle of the floor. Since Bumi was the challenger, he went first. The band started to play Dancing Machine.

Bumi started jacking (moving his torso back and forth as if a wave went through it). He moved to the beat of the song before he fell to the ground (planned) and sprung back up. His moves were somewhere between acid house and disco. He was lively, energetic for his 108 years and the crowd was roaring Bu-mi! Bu-mi! He was a dancing machine and Kuei had his work cut out for him.

Those who knew his moves had not seen them in at least two decades. His style was retro, and he owned it.

A good portion of the party was under twenty, including the bride. They had never seen most any of these moves before and were in awe.

"Who would have thought Bumi could throw it down?" Haru wondered.

"Even 100 years ago, he danced like crazy," Aang told him. The avatar was glad that some things just don't change.

After Bumi left the floor, Kuei had to pick a song. He talked to Longshot before going to where Bumi had just been.

They flickered the lights, getting everyone's attention as "Move Your Feet" started to play.

Kuei started to pump his arms and kick his legs. His movements were slow and controlled. This did not last for long. As the world found out, Kuei can break dance.

When the music got faster, so did Kuei. He turned himself into a marionette of sorts. His advisor pretending to be his puppet master as he moved; the juxtaposition was hilarious if a bit self-depreciating. In the middle of the song, he "broke free" and did a head spin before ending up in a handspring.

Azula wondered where he learned to street dance. Surely, he didn't learn during in his formal lessons.

The crowd ate it up. Even Bumi couldn't help but cheer. "So the guy does know how to live. At least he learned something in this palace."

After Kuei was declared the winner, the party hit a lull. People needed the bathroom and to rest and rehydrate after the boisterous affair on the dance floor.

Azula was enjoying a foot massage in a private suite.

"Whoever hired a masseuse for my wedding is a genius!"

"I believe its Lady Mai you should thank."

"Oh I do." Being pregnant and on her feet all day was tiring.

Kuei was getting his own massage. "This is awesome."

* * *

Sokka saw people going in and out of the opium parlor and snuck in. "What's going on in here?"

A woman approached him for a massage. Sokka readily accepted and was told to strip. He didn't find that odd since he was given a towel and the woman started with his shoulders.

The masseuse was from the water tribes. Sokka asked her what her name was.

"Hamako."

"Do you live in Ba Sing Se?"

"I was brought here for the wedding."

"Ah. Where do you usually live?"

"In a small town about two hours south of here. The pay was very good, so I made the trip."

"What's it like growing up in a …" she reached into his towel. "What are you doing?"

"You wanted a massage."

"I meant my back. My girlfriend would kill me if we did anything else."

"We never tell."

"But I don't want to indulge with anyone else."

"You are an honest man, unlike most of the guys who come in here."

Sokka frowned. He wasn't surprised, but it seemed unseemly to fool around with a concubine at a wedding, especially if you brought your wife with you.

When he came back, Suki asked him where he had gone.

"I got a massage."

She yelled at him. "YOU WHAT?"

"It was just a massage."

"Oh. They tend to be more liberal with them here."

"I noticed, but I'm not like that. I wouldn't want to be with a girl because someone paid her."

"Let's go back to the party."

They were just starting to serve the cake.

The baker cut the first piece. Azula fed the first bite to her husband and he fed her the second one.

Toph caked Aang in the face and the party was raucous once again. Aang found it funny. Lao and Poppy did not.

"How could you assault the avatar?"

"You call that assault. I kicked his butt every day!"

Poppy shook her head. "How unseemly!"

They had berry compote to go with the cake. Often, it was included in the layers, but Azula didn't like it on the cake. "It tastes good on its own, but I don't think it pairs well with the chocolate."

She and Kuei enjoyed their giant slice. On top of the cake were figurines of the couple. Kuei was in his formal robes but the model Azula was dressed as a conqueror.

Kuei kissed her nose. "Did I ever tell you that you're sexy when you're talking down to people?"

"Are you trying to encourage me?"

"Maybe a little bit."

They started to kiss. Azula couldn't wait to have him to herself, as soon as they dealt with this stupid assassination threat.

Zuko started making gagging noises. "You aren't in your bedroom yet!"

Iroh laughed at him. "You think they're bad?" He pointed to his right.

Haru and Ty Lee were pretty much groping each other at the table.

"I doubt they'll make it to the end of the party."

"EW!" Zuko complained.

"A little sex never hurt anyone," Iroh said, "well I should rephrase …"

"I don't want to know where you're going with that!"

* * *

Champagne came out with the cake. It was to ease people into drinking again before they went back to liquor. It also came with water and you could request milk if you wanted it with your cake.

The key to getting smashed and managing to stay smashed for a long time is well documented in the Earth Kingdom. They would have a "bar menu" run later in the night to slow down the alcohol absorption.

Once everyone had cake, Sokka went up on stage. "Karaoke night will be starting in about 15 minutes."

"WOOT!"

Azula hadn't decided what she was singing yet. She didn't have a lot of time. She tried to think. It had to be something modern. This was not the time for a traditional ballad. It also had to be something energetic and fun.

She heard Ty Lee whistling a song. "That's it."

She went to the band and told them what she was going to sing.

Sokka got on stage. "Are you ready for this party to finally begin?"

"What else is going to happen?" Zuko questioned. This party was already more wild than his coronation by far.

The crowd got noisy as Sokka announced the line up. "Tonight we have yours truly, the White Lotus, Queen Azula, The Seven Sisters, and last but not least, the Fire Lord."

"I AM NOT!"

Everyone got excited for that.

Zuko was ready to murder Sokka.

Mai was cracking up. "This is going to be so good!"

Sokka opened up with Touch Me. You could tell the booze was getting to him. His shirt was loose in the front and he had no problem shaking his hips like he was a pop star.

Hakoda was a bit disturbed by his suggestive moves. Katara pretended this wasn't happening and Suki couldn't hide her amusement.

The warrior was starting to get a fan club.

Once the crowd calmed down, well a little bit, the White Lotus went up and did Under Pressure.

Azula couldn't believe her uncle was on stage dancing at her wedding. Agni must be in hysterics laughing right now.

Before she knew it, it was Azula's turn to hit the stage. She took the singing trumpet and began her song. "Hey baby won't you look my way? I can be your new addiction." Her voice started off soft, but she quickly found her confidence.

Mai didn't know if she knew any modern music. "Well everyone likes this song," she commented.

"I don't know this song," said Zuko.

"Big shock," Ty Lee said dryly.

"You let go of Haru's face?"

"He's getting me more beer!"

"It started with a whisper and that was when I kissed her."

Her hips moved with the music as she moved across the stage, paying attention to both sides of the room.

Everyone was back on the dance floor.

This party would go on for quite some time.

Ty Lee and her sisters performed Bootylicious, which had the men saying (or thinking) all kinds of vulgar things. At any other time, their dance moves and their singing would be offensive, possibly obscene, but tonight was the night to get away with it.

Zuko found himself forced on stage. His guards picked him up and put them there. He told them all they were fired, and they said he'd be too drunk to remember by tomorrow anyway. Mai picked (I can't get no) satisfaction for him. She never thought this wedding would be so wonderful. There was a reason the dinner started at 4PM. They needed time to pack in all of these events.

After the karaoke night ended, the bride and groom said good night.

"Thank you all for coming," Kuei said proudly. "This has easily been the best night of my life and the night is still young."

People cheered at that.

"Please enjoy all of this for as long as you can stand up," Azula said with a smirk. "We have enough food and drink to keep you going. We even have extra baths and cots for those who want to try and meet Bumi's challenge."

People really cheered at that.

"Good night!"

They took their bow, got a standing ovation and headed to bed. There would be a fireworks display at midnight.


	14. Chapter 14

This is the final part of the wedding scene.

* * *

Now it was time to catch these would be assassins. The sky ship was being prepared. They waited in a guest room as opposed to their main room, so no one would know where they were, other than their friends and most trusted guards.

"I can't believe they're trying to catch them tonight," Aang said to Sokka as they got ready to fulfill their part of the plan.

"No better time to get them. It makes a strong statement and it cleans up the mess before it can get any bigger."

Aang hoped he had no stings at his wedding. He got Appa ready to fly. "Sokka's going to take you up okay."

Appa nodded.

"Make sure to follow his lead. We're doing a rescue mission tonight."

Appa had been given a special meal for his service tonight and he got a bath and a deep tissue massage. The masseuses said he was by far the largest client they ever had, and possibly the sweetest.

* * *

Kuei wanted their night to start now. He started to kiss her.

"Are we going to have time?" Azula asked him.

"Probably not." Kuei kept kissing her. His hand just reached the curve of her behind when there was a knock on the door. It was Kuei's guard. "Your sky ship awaits you."

"Sorry for the delay," the mechanic said. "We had to make sure it was extra ready. This thing will fly smoother than a baby's butt!"

"Perfect," Kuei said as he brought his wife aboard. "We'll need our privacy," he said to the head servant.

"Of course. If you require anything, please ring the bell."

They got in the room and locked the door. Azula dove into his arms. They fell on the bed.

"We don't have a lot of time, but we should be able to get in a good round now."

Kuei kissed her as he started to untie her dress. "You are the perfect Queen."

* * *

As they got ready to join the km high club, or the sky club as it was known, the party continued in their absence. People were changing dancing partners as it were, meeting new people from different nations as they chatted with those around them. Even in line at the bar, friendships were beginning to form.

Toph wished Chin hadn't had to return to work. She knew she couldn't distract him today, but he was cute and he was sweet, a little too polite, but she could beat that out of him.

I bet Snoozles is thrilled, she thought to herself as she went off by herself.

Mai and Ty Lee were floating around the party, looking for signs of trouble and trying to figure out if there are any clandestine meetings occurring.

Iroh was chatting with some of the Earth Kingdom generals. If there was a grab for the throne tonight, surely someone would have consulted them and made sure they stayed followed the new leader.

Zuko told him that Azula didn't trust Fong. He clearly was not a gentleman, but Iroh sensed that his patriotism was too strong for him to turn on his King, even if he hated the King's bride.

Iroh, instead, kept his eye on General How. He seemed like the quiet plotter who might do something like this.

Katara and Suki were upstairs. They figured if they left, people would assume their boyfriends left with them.

"I hope no one gets hurt," Katara said as she undid her hair.

"Me too. I know it's weird, but I'm starting to like Azula. She actually became fun once she got extricated from her father."

"I know. I never would have guessed Azula would sing karaoke at her wedding."

"Or not throw lightening at Ty Lee for giving her that kitten."

"Where is he going during their honeymoon?"

"Aunt Ty Lee is taking care of him in the palace, so he gets used to his new home."

"Wow!" Katara said with a laugh.

Both girls were sleepy after so much food and drink and they hadn't gotten closed to their boyfriend's imbibing.

"Should they be so drunk before they do this?" Suki questioned.

"Aang at leased used his heatbending to metabolize the booze faster."

"Whoa! That's cool."

"I know."

Aang also helped Sokka out by sharing his heatbending. "Jeong Jeong taught me this trick."

"He is a gentleman and a scholar," Sokka declared as he got magically sobered up and warm.

Aang chuckled. He was currently on Appa with Sokka, but he would be jumping onto the sky ship at the first sign of trouble to make sure he could get Azula and Kuei to the edge where they would have to jump to Appa.

The sky bison was staying near the clouds, keeping himself out of sight as he tailed the sky ship.

It was almost midnight. The fireworks would be going off at the palace. People were going outside. Looking for tall places from which to watch the display. Toph stayed inside with earplugs.

"You don't want to go out?" her father asked her.

"They hurt my ears. I can't see them."

"Sometimes, I forget you're blind."

"What? You kept me locked in my room because of it."

"I know, but I had time to think while you were gone and when you came back, you were so confident and free moving that I kind of forgot. I know you are blind, but it's not what I think of when I see you anymore."

Toph gave her father a crushing hug. She had no idea where this acceptance had come from, but she was so relieved.

* * *

Azula and Kuei were getting decent again. Instead of putting on their wedding attire, they wore street clothes with jackets. "From short distances, I can firefly, but at this height, we better reach Appa."

"I will follow your timing."

They started to smell smoke. "They set the ship on fire."

Azula tried to open the door, but it was locked from the outside. "Can you metalbend?"

"No, but I made sure we had this." Kuei took a sledgehammer out from under the bed and started to hit the door. It took him a few minutes, but he was able to break it off the hinges.

He threw the weapon and grabbed his wife, pulling her out of the room.

They ran to the edge where the Avatar had just appeared. He tuned down the flames, but this ship was sinking fast. "I couldn't find the pilot."

"He might have jumped to a smaller vessel."

Aang took his glider and he lowered Azula so she could jump on Appa. He went back for Kuei and then they were all safe.

* * *

While the sky ship caught fire, the fireworks went off, distracting the crowd.

The pilot made a crash landing. He had a primitive parachute as it were. He headed for the payoff location, not realizing he would be paid with a slit throat.

Appa quickly got the group out of sight. They weren't going to the palace, but instead to a safe house. "We have a messenger hawk so we can alert Ty Lee and Mai right away."

The quartet made their way inside the house. Aang and Sokka wanted to rest, so they would be alert for the flight back.

"How long are we staying in here?" Aang asked.

"Two hours," Azula said. "Long enough for them to find wreckage and start moving to put the new guy in power. When we get back to the palace, we'll be able to find out who's trying to become Earth King and who's helping him."

"So I can sleep for two hours?"

"Eighty minutes. If you sleep too close to the take off period, you'll be sloppy."

Aang quickly closed his eyes wanting to get his eighty minutes now.

Zuko couldn't focus on the fireworks. He kept looking for his sister's sky ship.

"She's too far for you to see her," Mai told him. "We have to believe that they made it out."

Zuko gulped. His once fearless sister was in a fight for her life, and he just didn't know her odds.

General Fong noticed nobles making their way out of the main room. He tried to follow only to hear that the men were taking power naps. He knew this was bullshit, but he went along with it. When he got the chance, he asked Lao do you know about any secret meeting tonight?"

"No," Lao said, surprised at the revelation. "I mean people make deals at these kind of things, but I don't know of anything covert."

Fong started to look around. Who could he trust here?

General How was mingling with the crowd. He was making sure to stand out, have people remember that he was socializing with the guest and having fun. He had to be able to say he was happy about the union when asked after Kuei's death.

He sipped his whiskey. Iroh seemed to be staying up pretty late.

"Prince Iroh, are you enjoying yourself?"

"Oh I am. This has been quite the party."

"I'm sure you've seen some good weddings in your day."

"I have, and I had a great wedding, but this wedding was much bigger. There were so many people, all having fun. People who had been enemies their whole lives danced together."

"So you're talking politics?"

"I'm talking everything. Politics, social affairs, family, it is all the same thing in the end."

"I suppose for a prince and a fellow general that would be true."

"Do you not find that your social life changed after the war?"

"I suppose it has," How did not want to discuss his social affairs with the Prince.

"It's been instrumental for me, and I imagine it will be for you if you aren't retiring."

"Oh no. I plan to help rebuild the Earth Kingdom."

"Then I'm sure you'll work quite closely with my niece, which you would have never thought possible before the war ended."

"I suppose you win this round, Prince Iroh."

"I suppose I'm just excited. This is a good time for the world."

"Indeed it is." How actually thought that was true.

The conversation ended. Both men knew to be wary of the other one. Iroh had no direct proof but he did not trust How for a second.

Zuko didn't know anything about the man. "I know he was a lesser noble before he made it to the Council."

"Not the kind of guy who would be made a king."

"No, but he might get some fancy post or his daughter gets to marry someone important."

"He has a daughter."

"Seventeen I think?" Zuko remembered Azula or was it Mai saying that to him.

"Interesting." Maybe he wants to make his daughter Earth Queen, Iroh thought. "Let's keep this under our hats for now," Iroh said as he left.

Zuko wondered about his uncle sometimes. He kept almost as many secrets as Azula, and that was saying something.

* * *

Chin was on his way to Ember Island to guard the Princess. He wanted to be on the skyship with her, but the Earth Kingdom soldier said that they needed their privacy. He's been her guard for two years. He knows everything about her, unfortunately.

He wanted to kill Ozai for the sickening way he used her. Chin had complained to his father. His father grabbed Chin's neck and said, "if you interfere with Ozai's business, he'll just kill you and beat her worse. He'll convince her no one can ever save her."

"You're saying nobody can."

"I'm saying, no one can alone."

When Azula ran away from the palace, Chin was relieved. She finally got out of that hellhole. He knew too damn much about her to care she was boinking the Earth King, even if it was a total mismatch.

She's really hot and he's just average looking. Yeah he's a King, but she's still a Princess without him. She could have been Fire Lord without him. She chose to rule behind him instead of ruling on her own. Chin knew her well enough to know Zuko would not be Fire Lord if she weren't lying down for him. (I don't mean any sexual implication- although being submissive can pretty much always lead to a sexual implication.)

Chin wondered why she had done that and he learned about the baby and it made sense. Being Fire Lord and married to the Earth King would be too hectic. They'd have to live in separate countries. She chose him and her baby over the Fire Nation throne. It seemed almost unfathomable for the lightening rod. She really changed since she met Kuei. He softened her.

Chin saw flames and yelled at the pilot. "Land this ship, there's a shipwreck over there."

"You have to protect the Queen."

"That wreck could be the Queen!"

The pilot scrambled to land and when they got there, Chin screamed. There were ruins everywhere. Azula's dress was in the wreckage. He looked around but he couldn't find her body. "Her dress is here! Where is her body?"

Kuei's clothes were there too and there was no body either.

The pilot did find a body. "Is this one of them?"

Chin shook his head. "This guy was too short to be Kuei and he's clearly a dude so he's not Azula. He must have been the waiter." Chin took a closer look. "He got stabbed. Someone murdered him!"

They struggled with what to do. "I can't leave the crime scene," Chin said.

"I gotta get help," said the Pilot.

"You go and come right back. I got to stand watch."

"What if the killer comes here?"

"Then I gotta fight."

There was an Earth Kingdom training exercise going on for the military. About 40 men were doing a drill when they heard a loud boom.

They rushed out to find out what happened. By the time they got to the scene, Chin was present.

"Who goes there!" the militia barked.

"Chin. I'm the Earth Queen's guard."

They approached the wreckage. "What happened?"

"I was forced to take a second ship by the men in charge of security on the palace. I wanted to ride with Azula. Anyway, I saw the flames and I ordered my pilot to land. We found the wreckage. Azula's dress is here, but there's no body that could be hers. The only body is of a man who got stabbed. He looks like he was the waiter. Kuei's clothes are also here, but no body for him either as the dead guy was short, and Kuei is quite tall. I'm praying to Agni they escaped, but I don't know where they would go or what they are wearing. I also didn't see any remains for the pilot, so he might have stabbed the waiter and wrecked the plane, but that's conjecture."

As he spoke, the military started surveying the scene. What he said corresponded to what they found. He declared his weapons and described his training. He seemed sincere, so they didn't restrain him or anything, but multiple guards watched him at all times.

They sent a message to the palace saying the King's ship had wrecked, his body was not there. Obviously there was much more to the case, but they wanted the message out in mere minutes.

* * *

It got to the Palace at 2AM and Grand Secretariat, an Admiral, one of Kuei's advisors and General How were all confused.

"Where's the body?" one man asked.

"Maybe it burned away. If bodies get too hot, they disappear."

"Would it be that hot in the crash?"

"It could be."

"Maybe he set their room on fire, so it was the hottest."

They accepted that reasoning and started to stage the scene. They were going to panic and then reveal to the rest of the Council of Five that the King and the Queen were dead.

General How convened the Council. "A cause of death is not yet known, but we have to assume assassination and we need to have someone be the government right now."

"We have no royal family," one member said.

"Can we get the Avatar to help?"

"We are tracking him down now, but he isn't here."

"We need someone to act as the King."

"Let's say Jian is acting King while they're on vacation tonight and in the morning, announce the crash."

"Let the killers think we think they're alive, so we can get the jump on them."

"What a good rouse!"

They made the announcement, unaware that the Dai Li was eavesdropping on the conversation. Many believed them only administrative now, but Azula had turned them into her personal spy agency. They determined who was in the room, and they now knew to watch Jian and How.

One of the agents reported to Mai.

"Very good." Hopefully, they actually escaped the crash.

* * *

Aang flew the long way back to Ba Sing Se, so no one would see them before they returned to the palace.

"We won't get there until 4AM," Aang told them.

"Good thing we already got it on," Kuei muttered.

Azula blushed. "Can you make it 3:30? I will give Appa all of the belly rubs in the world."

Appa started to rush.

* * *

Chin's pilot got to a town, but everything was closed other than the bar.

He went inside.

"What do you want to drink?"

"I can't drink; I'm a pilot!"

"Why are you here?"

"I discovered a plane wreck, and I need the police."

"They ain't up this late. Ring the bell and hope they get up."

It was thirty minutes before a guy made it outside.

"Why are you ringing the emergency bell?"

"Because I have an emergency!"

"No one rings the bell!"

"The bartender told me to."

"Screw him. What's your emergency?"

"I found a shipwreck. The Earth King may be dead."

"The King!" The man started ringing the bell faster and faster. "Get your lazy behinds up now!"

Another thirty minutes later, the force was on the plane getting the low down from the pilot.

"So you found a dead body that's not the King and the King's clothes."

"Yes. We have no idea where he is."

"This is so bad." The officer was secretly excited. This would be the biggest case of his life.

They made it back to see the military already there. The police were disappointed. "I thought we'd to solve the case."

"We're still looking for the pilot," the military told them.

The police joined the search, looking for signs of something.

Eventually, an earthbending police officer found a bunker. He went inside. The pilot was dead, stabbed in the heart.

The report got sent to the Palace. "The pilot was murdered! Still no sign of the King or Queen."

Iroh and Zuko were both on high alert. The Fire Lord went to ask a guard a question.

"Who's in charge while Kuei is gone?"

"The Council of Five."

Zuko went back to his uncle. "The Council of Five is in charge right now. We should stay up and see if they put anyone in charge specifically."

* * *

At 3:28, Appa landed in the back of the palace.

"You are the best sky bison ever," Azula told him as she scratched his head.

They started to make their way into the palace. Azula wanted to get whatever intelligence they had, right now.

They made it into the Avatar's guest room. Toph sensed their arrival and came to find them. "So y'all made it. Good work."

Azula nodded. "What do you know?"

"I know there was some secret meeting before the Council of Five. Fong tried to get in but he couldn't."

"He wasn't allowed in?" Azula was surprised.

"No. They met and then the Council of Five met and then a bunch of people moved around, it got dizzying to try and keep track of. They haven't announced the crash."

"But they know about it."

"I'm pretty sure they do."

The Dai Li came next with a more up to date report. "They have a new royal family planned. At least one of the Council of Five was in on it."

They got the list of names.

"Who's How?" Azula barely remembered him.

"He's got a daughter who's around your age, a little older. He wanted me to marry his daughter."

"He must have been furious when you married me instead."

"I guess he was. I didn't think about it."

"The others were either close with Jian or How."

"I bet How hired Long Feng and then killed him right after the hypnosis job was done. Feng was dead for a while before Aang found him."

"EW!" Aang complained at the memory.

"Jian probably stayed away from the planning so he could feign innocence," Sokka pointed out.

"Inform Iroh and Zuko that we're alive and give them the list of bad guys," Kuei told the agent.

"The same goes for Mai and Ty Lee," Azula added.

The agent departed.

* * *

At 5AM, the Grand Secretariat rang the distress bell. The people rushed outside to the courtyard, drunk, disheveled, and barely dressed. Some had still been partying and were told that there was a horrible crash and Kuei and Azula were dead. People were clamoring, gasping, and some were weeping.

He announced that they had to assume it was an assassination and the Council of Five appointed Jian as temporary Earth King until they catch the people who did this. Avenging their fallen King and Queen would be the first priority.

Jian came out and made a speech. "As we speak, our military is looking for evidence as to how the crash happened, who caused it and where are they hiding. We will overturn every rock and search every bunker until we catch the bastards responsible for this. We won't ever let terrorists win!"

Zuko and Iroh were negotiating with the Council of Five. Zuko was furious. He demanded to know when they learned of the crash and how long did they wait before they told him.

"She may have been your Queen but she was my sister and you had no right to keep this from me. My investigators will be searching through everything and if I find out any of you had anything to do with this, you'll wish you hadn't."

They felt threatened and summoned the guards to get him out, but his guards arrived too. This would be a power struggle.

General How made it into the room and said "Now is not the time for baseless accusations."

The avatar came in right after him.

"Funny you should say that, since you're the one who planned the crash."

The Earth Kingdom guards turned to face the General.

"That's absurd. What a baseless accusation and you weren't even here when we went looking for you!"

"I know. I was shadowing Azula's ship. I saw the pilot set the fire and I watched Kuei break down the door with a sledgehammer so he could get out of his bedroom. The pilot had locked him in."

"What?" How said.

"Yeah, the King and Queen are alive. Your plan to kill them on their way to their honeymoon and put your friend Jian on the throne backfired big time."

He attacked the Avatar, trying to get out of the room, but Aang delivered an air blast that made him spin and then an upper cut that made him fall to the ground.

Aang called for the arrest of the corrupt Council of Five member and they quickly round up the other offending parties.

* * *

Mai and Ty Lee was surprised that they made a run for it, like they would get out of the palace without anyone catching them first, but it was pretty funny. Ty Lee was chi-blocking people, making them fall on their faces as Mai threw knives. They were drunk and sleep deprived; no one stood a chance against them

Jian was saved for last. He had no idea his comrades were taken into custody and started to write a military authorization. He wanted to put tight controls on the city in case people protested his rule.

"Get off my chair you asshole!" Kuei yelled at him

"What?" Jian looked like he saw a ghost. "I mean, My King. You survived."

"Don't give me bullshit. I was locked in a ship and it was set on fire. I get home to see you usurping my crown. Give me a good reason not to have you beheaded at noon!"

"You can't think I did this. The Council of Five suggested me because of my peacekeeping work."

Toph and a Dai Li agent earthbended into the room.

"That's a cute story," Toph said to him. "Too bad we overheard your buddies talking all about the plan. Y'all really weren't very clever. They went on the sky ship to set a trap for you. You fell right into it."

He quickly launched a rock at Toph's head.

He moved first, but she moved smarter, taking a rock that was right behind him to bonk him on the head. She was able to duck the attack he sent her way and he was unconscious. "Oops!"

General Fong had been "held" for questioning, but there wasn't enough evidence that he was involved.

Iroh intervened. "If I may, Azula, I observed him during the night and I didn't get the impression he was involved. I think he loves the Earth Kingdom more than he hates you."

Azula could believe that. "You may be right. Perhaps he was just a red herring." He didn't try to kill "the Prophet" which he could have done and made look it like a suicide to get us to not look for more clues. Then again, Long Feng was already dead, so they knew he couldn't snitch on them. Azula decided he could go for now, but audit his finances.

Kuei came to her. "We took down everyone."

"We'll still have to audit the military."

"Yes, but I think we can leave that to the others while we go on our honeymoon."

"You actually have a honeymoon planned?"

Kuei laughed. "Did you think we were just going back to work?"

"Yes. I thought the plans you gave your advisors were just to throw them off track."

"Oh they were. I have a much better honeymoon planned."

Azula was well, baffled. "I don't know what to say right now."

"When do you want to go?"

"When we find my guard."

"Oh yeah. He's probably wondering where you are."

They sent for Chin who was relieved to find his Princess was in one piece. He was given extra vacation time for being the guy who got stuck in the weeds.

The police department was excited to find they were getting an award for coming out in a time of distress. They went above and beyond what they signed up for as small town cops.

The pilot was just glad to be able to take a vacation. He was really tired.

Once Azula had a chance to say goodbye to everyone, and say thanks to those who helped made sure she didn't die, she and Kuei departed for their honeymoon. He was flying her to the old castle on the west coast of the country. The capital city had once been there before they moved it to Ba Sing Se. Kuei had the palace restored, so that he and Azula could have it as a private vacation home.

They were going to be trying out the rooms to start their vacation. They would have guards and staff to attend to them and to disappear when they were not attending to them.

This would be paradise.

King Bumi made an announcement. "So here's the deal. Some jerks tried to kill our King and Queen. They failed. They're in jail and we still have all this food and booze and entertainment. Why don't we celebrate our King an Queen because they're alive?"

The party went on. The numbers were much smaller as some people went home and others were asleep in the palace. They would keep rotating crowds that would dwindle as time went on, but they had a good shot at making this party go on longer than three days. Some people even came back to party some more once they had refreshed at home.

Sokka went to sleep as soon as he could and he woke up at around 8PM, ready to eat and then ready to party.

Suki had a more normal sleeping pattern and was not about to stay up all night with him.

Aang also slept in. He woke up around six and had dinner with Katara.

Appa was outside getting lots of belly rubs.

Trouble was with Ty Lee and Mai. "Isn't he cute?" Ty Lee cooed.

Mai still found it comical that Ty Lee found this stupid cat. "Azula must hate you for this!"

"I know she likes cats. She just lies about it." Ty Lee had caught her cuddling with Shoo once. Azula said it must have been a hallucination.

"I can't believe we've already faced our first power grab since Azula became Queen."

"You don't think this will be it."

"This will be the only attempt on her life for a while, but I think we'll get more action."

Ty Lee always hoped for boredom when it came to Azula, not that it ever happened.

Lao was relieved to hear the Queen was still alive. He was afraid the luxury sky ships would not come together if she weren't there to support the project. Sure, the Fire Nation was coming out with a line first and Lao would try it out, but he wanted an Earth Kingdom cruise line so he could become an investor for it.

Poppy was eager to go home, but Lao wanted to try and make deals.

Poppy decided he could come home later and said goodbye to his daughter before she took a carriage home.

Toph found out that Chin had the rest of the wedding party off.

"So the longer we party, the longer you don't have to go to work."

"Exactly."

"Then why don't we party?"

Zuko was relieved that Kuei and Azula took off. "They can relax far away from people who might want them dead."

"I think they need this time off," Iroh told them. "They didn't have much of a wedding night."

"EW! Don't want to know what they had, but they have a week to do whatever far away from me."

Kuei gave his wife a massage.

"A little to the left," Azula said as she directed him. "That's perfect."

"How do you like the palace?" he questioned as he rubbed her.

"Right now," Azula said. "It's perfect." Unlike the wild party at the palace, they were in a nice quiet estate. They had already tried out two different bedrooms.

"I want food," Azula said.

Kuei rang the bell.

A servant came to them and Azula requested cow pig sliders.

"Will you love me when I'm fat?"

"You're not going to get fat. You're pregnant. It's not the same thing."

"How is it not? My feet are going to be too fat for my shoes, my body too fat for its clothes. The baby gives me an excuse, but I'll still be fat."

"You will be curvaceous and sexy," Kuei insisted as he started to kiss her neck, "just as you are now."

She started to moan as he tried to get under her clothes.

The servant knocked when the food came and entered when he got no answer.

They were not paying attention to him, so he set the food down and ran away.

Kuei went to pull Azula on top of him when she got up to eat.

He thought she would wait until they were done, but then he thought again. When she's hungry, she's hungry. "Are they good?"

Azula gave him one to bite into. They were quite tasty. "We need to keep our energy up, so we can enjoy our wedding night."

"Is it still our wedding night?"

"We haven't gotten a night's sleep, so yes."

"Well in that case, we should go back to bed and then order more food."

Azula finished her last pork slider and washed her hands of the saucy goodness before she went to join her husband in bed. "We should keep doing this, repeatedly."

"Oh we will."


	15. Chapter 15

Warning: sexual abuse and warning to past abuse, but the chapter ends on a happy note.

* * *

While they newlyweds enjoyed their marital bliss, their friends and family, well Azula's family had fun figuring out whom in the military and nobility had supported the coup attempt. The party continued like planned, but the "responsible people" had to deal with the aftermath of the wedding night.

One of Long Feng's ex Dai Li agents (some of them left the group when Azula took over) was the messenger for General How. He had been working for Long Feng, but then How outbid him, and subsequently killed Long Feng. The ex-agent was anxious for a plea deal, and he gave them a lot of dirt.

"So we got 10 people in jail," Sokka said.

"And their houses are all being searched," Suki added.

"And we have surveillance on some persons of interest," Ty Lee told them.

"Most of them are probably innocent, but we wanted to cover our bases," Mai clarified.

"Jian's allies are all saying they had nothing to do with it and denouncing him," Sokka said feigning seriousness.

"Where's Toph?" Suki questioned.

Sokka went to look for her. When he heard moaning, he opened the door to see Chin's shirt off and Toph was straddling him.

"Get off him!"

"Stay out of it! Snoozles!"

The two argued about her chastity and his nosiness.

Chin was hardly one to go so far with the young noble tonight. He did not want to be the father of a party baby.

After five and a half days, the party finally died.

"Now that was a wedding," Aang said. He couldn't believe it was so crazy.

"I never want to drink again," Sokka declared.

"You'll be drunk next week," Katara told him.

Toph was saying goodbye to Chin. He'd have to fly out in the morning.

"You should visit sometime."

"I think I can arrange that." Chin decided he was going to apply to be Queen Azula's guard, which would make him work for Kuei and not Zuko. He knew his place was with his wacky Princess, and Toph lived here now. It seemed like a good time to move.

* * *

Zuko and Mai were on their way home. "I need a vacation," Zuko grumbled.

"That was our vacation."

"Dealing with drunken Sokka and a coup attempt."

"You're right. It wasn't boring enough to be vacation."

Mai felt well rested. She was sure to find the masseuses she had hired for Azula and visit them daily.

Zuko said, "I hope our wedding is boring. I don't want to fight a coup."

"Maybe you'll be more popular than your sister."

Zuko cringed. "I hope so."

"Although, she kind of upstaged you in karaoke."

"I'm still going to kill Sokka and fire those guards."

"Oh it was for the record books, best Earth Kingdom/Fire Nation wedding ever."

"You didn't get on stage."

"I had to watch them practice bootylicious way too many times. They wanted my feedback."

Zuko started guffawing. "That's amazing."

"I still can't look Ty Lee in the eye."

Ty Lee and Haru were enjoying the palace. "This was an awesome party."

"People will talk about it for years."

People went home, where the gossip continued. Every guest had a unique version of the events.

Azula and Kuei returned from their week of rest to get a tabby, who promptly started to follow Azula around and a country that was ready for them to take over.

"I guess the honeymoon is over," Kuei said as reports and correspondence greeted them.

"It is, but you were right. It was much better than the itinerary you had given your advisors."

He grinned as he got her a chair. "Let's get to work."

* * *

Three Months Later

Azula had quite the baby bump. She was six and a half months along, and she had a perfect sphere on her torso.

"My baby keeps kicking me!"

"I bet its just saying hi," Kuei kissed the middle of her stomach. The baby stopped.

"He stops for you," she pouted.

"You think it's a boy."

Azula nodded. "The child feels like a he to me." Months ago, she had realized this but she hadn't said anything. It was way too early to tell back then.

"We can find out from the doctor," he told her.

"I want it to be a surprise."

"You do."

"Yes." She also wanted the bending to be a surprise. She hoped the news would leave them both excited and there wouldn't be any disappointments.

Kuei climbed into bed with her. "Shall we take a break?"

"Yes." She started to take off his shirt.

* * *

Mai and Zuko were hard at work trying to keep the country in order. The private sky ships were bringing in much needed money, but Zuko still had to get the debt under control. He didn't want the currency to plummet, which it would if the Fire Nation nobles moved all their money to the Earth Kingdom. He had resisted raising taxes to keep them home, but now he had to raise some money.

"What if we sell bonds instead of raising taxes," Mai questioned?"

"How would that help?"

"It will be easier to get them to part with their money if we promise to give them more money later. They will also have an interest in making sure our currency doesn't go to shit."

Zuko ceded the point. "Have we ever done this before?"

"I think Azulon used bonds to make money at some point during the war."

"And we actually were able to pay it all back."

"Yeah. People can make more on the private market, but they don't have to pay tax on the money that's in the bond, and there's a very little risk of the investment going bad."

Once all the drama settled down, Iroh reopened his teashop in Ba Sing Se. He would be staying until after the baby is born and then going on a vacation to the Fire Nation to see his nephew.

Ty Lee joined the Kyoshi Warriors. She bonded with them at the wedding and decided it would be fun to get a second set of sisters. She had enough of her real sisters for a good while.

Sokka and Katara were travelling with Aang and helping him with rebellion suppressions. Ba Sing Se was good. Everyone was too scared to act up there after the failed coup attempt.

Instead, they had to deal with hostile Fire Nation groups. Some said it was time for a new royal family, let the Earth Kingdom deal with the line of Sozin, but no other family was strong enough to take the role of Fire Lord. Knowing this, many who did not particularly like Zuko, did not try to get rid of him.

This left the revolting groups weak, but they did not quit, which meant Aang didn't quit either.

Back in Ba Sing Se, the Court had a new look to it. General Sung was now the leader of the Council of Five, which was on probation after its blunder in the assassination attempt, not to mention General How's pivotal role.

Kuei concluded the other Generals were innocent of treason, but they should not have taken How's word so quickly. They had too much power to wield it so recklessly and some were calling for the Council of Five to go all together.

Kuei knew there would be backlash for getting rid of such an old institution, so he decided to modernize it instead. "The biggest problem is that they are all from the same background. They all think like military men and they have a buddy buddy system since they all served together. They need a different way of thinking.

He appointed Lao Bei Fong as a member of the council and in the future, the Council would always have two civilian posts. Their powers were also being codified. They would still exist and be an integral part of the country, but their seemingly free reign was over.

General How killed himself in jail. He did not want to spend his days locked in a cell and he knew he wouldn't get out for his role in the plot. His daughter would be disgraced. She'd be lucky to marry a turnip farmer now.

King Bumi was glad to see Kuei actually running the country. Sure Azula was there to nudge him (or shove him) in the right direction, but he didn't sit in the back seat anymore. Whether it be the council or the nobility, Kuei couldn't be kept in the dark anymore.

Neither could Trouble. He flopped on the bed and tried to get between his parents.

"You have to accept that I'd rather cuddle with my husband than you."

The cat purred.

Azula rolled her eyes as Trouble nestled against her.

Kuei was on her other side.

Pregnancy was so strange. She couldn't lie on her side anymore. She felt like she was weighed down, and she needed to rest a lot more. The closer her child got to becoming a person, the more it seemed to need.

She would be relieved when he was out, well that part sounded horrid, but someday he'd be out and he'd have his own body to bother.

* * *

Ozai was becoming increasingly violent in prison. It was closer and closer to his daughter's due date, her heir being born for the Earth Kingdom throne and not for the Fire Nation's. He never foresaw that she would belong to someone else someday. As sick as it was, he dreamt about fucking her while she was pregnant.

She would not be around for him to abuse anymore. Zuko wouldn't allow Ozai any visitors, and no one wanted to come see him. Since she was unavailable, Ozai went for what he could get, a loudmouth inmate nicknamed Chopsticks. He was tall and scrawny, looking like a Chopstick. He had a big mouth, talking a lot of trash when he first got there, some of it about Ozai.

The inmate thought he was safe. Ozai was always carefully watched, but one night, Ozai had laundry duty. It sucked that the prisoners had to do chores, but it meant he was out of his cell. Chopsticks had been in the shower and was about to leave when he felt a hand on his throat.

"Now you're my bitch," Ozai hissed at him before he slammed the naked man into the wall.

* * *

Zuko got a report of the rape the next day. "Why am I just getting this?" He expected more immediate notice.

"The inmate was unconscious when we found him. It was hours before we could get him awake, and he didn't want to talk right away. We just found out Ozai was responsible."

The man got moved to solitary and given only rice and water, but prison was making the man quite brutish. Once his solitary stint was over, he went after Chopsticks again. The poor bastard had just gotten out of the infirmary when Ozai was caught choking him unconscious.

The Fire Lord was left with a tough decision. Ultimately, he decided to have his father hanged.

"You're going to kill him?" Aang questioned.

"He raped another inmate and then tried to kill him afterwards. I can't keep him in solitary forever."

He kept trying to attack the guards when they'd bring him his food.

"He's lost any trace of humanity."

Mai was sickened for a completely different reason. It was unlikely that Ozai's first time raping someone was in jail. It seemed more likely that he preferred women but he couldn't attack any in jail. She made an unsettling point, "Ozai's probably done this before he got arrested."

Zuko's eyes got wide. "You don't think?"

Aang wasn't following. "Whom are you talking about?"

Zuko confronted the Royal doctor who was scared to tell him what he knew in fear of retribution until Mai said he wouldn't get fired, just talk.

He described a night where Ozai had choked Azula unconscious and left her in tattered baby doll in the hallway like an empty food tray. A sage found her and carried her to the infirmary where she was treated. "She seemed to be having selective amnesia, which might have been the early stages of PTSD. She refused to talk about it, but the bruises were so large, only Ozai could have caused them."

It explained why she hates baby dolls, Mai thought. Ozai made her dress up for him.

The doctor said the man was truly a sociopath who gets off on others' suffering.

Zuko had Ozai put on trial for aggravated child abuse for his abuse of Azula and sexual battery for his attack on the inmate. Azula did not testify. Instead, the royal doctor, her guard and the sage that found her in the hallway testified as well as Chopsticks.

At Ozai's hearing, he had a smirk on his face as they recounted the crimes for which he stood accused.

* * *

When Ozai learned Azula would not be coming to the trial, he was not happy.

"I have a right to face my accuser. Where is she?"

His lawyer thought it best she not appear. "It's all hearsay without her. We have a better shot at reasonable doubt if she doesn't appear."

Ozai wanted to see her again. He wanted her to tell the court, and thus the world, all he had done to her. He offered Zuko a deal. "I'll plead guilty to everything and waive my death hearing sentence if you bring your sister to the trial."

"No way."

"I'll tell you where your mother is."

As tempting as it was, Zuko refused to bite.

Ozai had to get one last lick in. "You know, I still jerk off to the memory of Azula's first time."

Zuko threw a fireball so fast that Ozai didn't see it coming. It got Ozai right in the face. "Now we match," he hissed.

Zuko hoped he hadn't ruined their case with his outburst. Ozai always knew how to bring out the worst in him.

* * *

Three weeks later, Ozai was dead, buried in a simple pine box. He got buried like a pauper, and not like the Phoenix King he had once been.

Azula didn't go to the hanging. She didn't disagree with her brother for doing it. It seemed Ozai would attack anyone he could get close enough to touch. She did, however, want to keep her baby away from her father, even as he died. She thought it best their worlds never intersect.

Many cheered Ozai's death, especially in the Earth Kingdom. Impromptu parties broke out in the streets. As long as people didn't riot, they let them continue, despite the noise violations.

Azula couldn't bring herself to celebrate death even if her tormentor was the one to die. "This baby has made me softer than a pillow."

Chin was quite glad Ozai was dead. He found it kind of disingenuous that his crimes against his daughter were listed as aggravated child abuse. Surely it constituted as that, but the charges made it seem like he was only beating her when he was much worse than that.

He knew why they did that, to shield her from the world's prying eye, but people knew Ozai was a rapist; Chopstick's family sued the prison. The public was still going to ask the same questions. He didn't think the man would have one follower left if people knew what a monster he had been.

He went to check on the Queen. She sat in a rocking chair that looked out on her balcony.

"Is there anything I can get for you my Queen?"

"No." As the people cheered in the streets, Azula felt depressed. It was scary to think she was half of the man who inspired such festivity with his execution and her son would be ¼ him. Days like this made her wish Ursa had had an affair and Ozai wasn't her father.

"Do you think people are destined to become like their parents?" she asked him.

"I'm sure everyone inherits some traits from his or her parents, but I think the choices people make matter more. At the end of the day, you had everything in your grasp. You could have been Fire Lord. Hell, you could have been Phoenix Queen, but you decided your child mattered more. You didn't get that from Ozai."

Despite Chin's kind words, Azula still worried about not being able to parent her child. She started to become quieter and withdrawn as her due date got near.

Kuei gave her some space, hoping she'd be able to come to him about her fears.

Trouble took the opposite approach, nuzzling his owner as he climbed in her lap.

"When I want to be left alone, you always bother me."

The cat lied down.

"Is that on purpose? Are you some kind of therapy cat?"

He purred.

"Well answer this. How am I supposed to be a mother when my own mother hated me, and my own father kept me close and alienated me from the rest of my family so he could turn me into his sexual play thing. I don't know anything about parenting other than to not do what my parents did. That leaves way too many doors open."

Kuei had just walked in.

"How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough," he said. He had learned the art of non-answers from her.

"I'm too broken," she said.

"You're not broken. You have new parent jitters. We all have them. We all fear we aren't enough, but we are. I trust you, even though you don't trust yourself yet. When our child is born, you'll see."

* * *

It was two weeks later when Azula's water broke. She frantically rang her bell. They rushed her to the delivery room they had set up in the palace.

Iroh got the notification and came to the palace at once.

Azula was throwing the ice chips they gave her at the nurses while Kuei tried to keep her calm.

Iroh had a teakettle ready. This would be a while.

After 10 hours of Azula's yelling, ice throwing, and breathing fire, the Crown Prince was born.

Thor was 3kg and he had his father's greyish-green eyes and his mother's hair and nose.

The doctor held him up. "He's an earthbender."

Azula was ecstatic that he was alive and healthy. "He's perfect." She held the tiny being in her arms.

Kuei kissed her head. "How do you feel?"

"Like hell, but he was worth it."

After Kuei got to hold their son, Iroh got his turn. "You came at the perfect time," Iroh said both alluding to when he was born and when he was created. The world was changing for the better, and some day, Thor would be a big part of that.

Over the next two weeks, everyone visited from Zuko and Mai to the Council of Five.

When Zuko arrived the next afternoon, Azula was asleep. Her baby was with the nurse, and she brought him to his uncle.

"Thor is an earthbender," the nurse told them.

"They named him Thor?" Mai chuckled. "She would name him after the god of thunder. Though he'll never throw lightening."

"I'm okay with that," Zuko laughed as the baby yawned. "He can however, wield a giant hammer."

Mai heard rustling and went to investigate. Azula was just waking up from her nap.

"You look like Mai."

"I should," she said to her friend. "So how's motherhood?"

"Tiring. I've never done something so laborious before."

"I supposed that's why they call it labor."

"Hah, where's Zuzu?"

He came into the room with Thor. "He has your nose." The child looked like Ursa. Azula wouldn't say it aloud but she was relieved he didn't look like Ozai.

Thor started to cry. Azula took him and began to rock him. "He's got a healthy set of lungs," she commented, which is not surprising since he comes from a line of firebenders. She didn't know what traits were associated with strong earthbenders.

Both Nations celebrated Thor's arrival. He had one home, but two nations who laid claim to him.

It was warmer in the Fire Nation. The people celebrated in the streets with meat pastries and music. Fireworks went off at night.

There were more indoor celebrations in the Earth Kingdom, whiskey and feasts that the nobles would put on as they clamored about the newest royal.

Thor was too young to think of anything other than eating, napping and diaper changes, but someday, he'd become a King.

* * *

Five days after Thor was born, Ty Lee and Haru came for a visit.

"Oh he's gorgeous," Ty Lee said as she picked up the baby. Haru didn't say it, but he was relieved that the next king was an earthbender. A firebending Earth King just felt wrong. He wasn't ready for it yet.

"He has his mother's face, well except for the eyes." The child's skin tone was in between both his parents. He looked a little like Kuei but mostly like Azula.

Ty Lee took the baby back to his mother. "How have you been holding up?"

"I'm so tired," Azula admitted as she held her son. "Between my body recovering, his incessant hunger and the doctors and nurses ocd personality, it's a lot of work." There are also all the visitors, but it's nice to see that people care about her son.

"When he's a bit older, I'd be glad to take him for an afternoon or two, give you a chance to rest."

"I think I'll take you up on that."

Just then, a nurse came in. "Did you feed him?"

"I fed him an hour ago."

"You're supposed to feed him the same time everyday."

"I'll feed him when he's hungry."

It didn't take Ty Lee long to figure out that Azula argued with the nurses about her son quite frequently. When the nurse left, Azula said, "I made the mistake of admitting I was nervous about being a mother for the first time. They have been hovering over me since I had him like they think I'll break him or something."

Ty Lee kissed her friend's forehead. "I'm sure he'll be just fine."

After Azula put Thor down for his nap, the two girls shared a pot of tea and caught up on what happened since they last saw each other.

"How's Kyoshi Island?"

"It's great." Ty Lee really liked the warrior house.

* * *

Two weeks after Thor was born, all of his visitors were going about their business.

Azula was ready to relax with her baby. "They say using real words instead of baby talk will help you learn faster. I don't know if you can learn anything right now, but I'm going to tell you about the night I met your father, (the G version obviously)."

She told him all kinds of stories from her first day at the royal academy to the day she learned to throw lightening.

Kuei would sometimes listen in from another room. He didn't want to interrupt their bonding, but Azula was doing so well. She was much more maternal than she thought she could be.


	16. Chapter 16

Back in the Fire Nation, Mai was staring at a box of Ozai's possessions from the prison. Zuko was supposed to go through it months ago, but he kept putting it off. Mai was hoping there would be some clues as to what happened to Ursa.

She found a letter that Ursa had sent to Ikem, presumably her lover.

"I think Zuko might be yours and not Ozai's."

Mai's eyes got huge. If this is true, then Zuko's not eligible for the throne. Would that make Iroh Fire Lord?

Technically, Azula and Thor come first, but she won't want to leave her husband or send her infant to the Fire Nation.

The letters could help find Ursa. Mai took the others and showed them to Zuko.

"Maybe she went to find him after she got banished."

Zuko nodded. "Let's see what records we can find on Ikem."

Mai kept the secret letter to herself. She knew she should tell Zuko, but she worried about getting him in trouble. If he knew he wasn't of the line of Sozin and kept ruling, he could be charged with treason.

This meant, she couldn't ask anyone in the Fire Nation for help. They would all have a responsibility to go to the sages. Instead, Mai wrote to the Avatar.

Aang came to the Fire Nation from Gaoling. He had been there to settle a dispute between the merchants and the shipping company. A disagreement on the fee led to violence. The shipping company threatened to return with the goods and the merchants threatened to sink their vessels.

"Your letter was a little cryptic," Aang said to Mai. "What's going on?"

"I went through Ozai's things to see if we could get a clue on where Ursa is, and I found this." She showed him the letter.

Aang gulped. "You mean Zuko's not a prince?"

"I don't know. She didn't even know."

"Is there some kind of test?"

"There is for noble blood, but she was a noble, I think. I'm not 100% sure on that either."

"Maybe we should just burn the letter," Aang suggested.

Mai thought about destroying it. "I don't know what to do. I can't keep this from Zuko, but telling him might get him in serious trouble. He might have to step down."

Aang offered a different perspective. "As far as we know, Azula and Thor are of the right bloodline. Even if Zuko isn't really a born prince, does it really matter if she doesn't say anything? It's not like she'll bring treason charges against him."

Zuko was excited and surprised to hear Aang was here. "I didn't know he was coming to visit."

He went to find him.

"Is Katara with you?" Zuko questioned.

"No. She's helping Pakku train waterbenders at the tribe right now."

"What brings you here by yourself?"

Mai coughed up the letter.

Zuko found it a relief that Ozai wasn't his father.

"You're not concerned."

"About what?"

"The throne."

Zuko shrugged. "I don't see why this has to change anything. Even if this letter did get out, it's not like it's the first time a prince's paternity was questionable. No one even knew for sure who Sozin's father was."

Mai should have realized this situation probably happens a lot in the royal family.

"You don't think you'll get forced out."

"By whom? Azula doesn't want the job and neither does Iroh. I guess the sages could try to coronate Thor, but I doubt they'd rush to make an earthbender Fire Lord."

"Maybe we should just keep this to ourselves," Aang suggested.

Instead of worrying about Zuko's paternity, they decided to focus on his mother's whereabouts.

"So they were both from Hira'a, but Ikem disappeared a few years after Ursa left to marry Ozai." Aang recounted.

"The letters she wrote got sent back, which is how Ozai got them," Mai added.

"Maybe he changed his name," Zuko suggested. "If Ozai found out about Ikem, he would have threatened him to stay away."

"If Ozai knew that Zuko was not his, why didn't he say anything?" Aang questioned.

Mai looked at the date of the letter. "Azula was born about a year after she sent this letter to Ikem. If Ozai got it a month or two later and learned Zuko was probably not his, then he would have demanded a second child, hence Azula."

Zuko frowned. It also explained the favoritism from his parents. Ozai favored Azula because she was his, and Ursa favored Zuko because he wasn't. It's not like either of them had a choice in the matter.

"We should head to Hira'a," Zuko said.

Iroh came to watch the throne while they were gone.

It took them a few days to get to Hira'a and find Ursa.

Hira'a was small and it was hard to identify it from above, so Aang landed near a town and had to figure out how to get to Hira'a from where they had ended up.

"It's only two hours that way."

"Why not just fly there?"

"Appa's tired and I might overshoot it."

Zuko groaned.

They eventually made it there and Kiyi was at the door. She had an uncanny resemblance to Azula.

"Is your mother home?"

The girl ran inside.

"I think we scared her," Mai said.

Eventually a woman came out. "Can I help you?"

She looked kind of like Ursa but plain somehow Zuko was confused. "Are you Ursa?"

"No. I'm Noriko. Who's Ursa?"

"She's my mother. She got banished when I was a child. I haven't seen her in six years."

"Oh that's too bad."

"She's from around here. I was hoping you knew her."

"I got here about six years ago. I never heard of her. Maybe my husband has."

They went inside and waited for Noren to come home.

"Noren, these people want to know about Ursa. Do you know her?"

"Who are they?"

"I'm Zuko, her son and this is my girlfriend Mai, our friend Aang."

"You're the avatar?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Um, yes. Ursa went to the Mother of Faces and got a new identity so Ozai couldn't find her."

"Who is she now?"

"Noriko."

"But that's …" Me. Noriko looked at Zuko. "I was his mother?" she didn't remember it at all.

Noren explained to everyone how he and Ursa had been in love, but the Fire Lord came for her so she married Ozai. He found out about their letters and he threatened Ikem, so he ran away and became Noren. When Ursa got banished, they went to the Mother of Faces, so she wouldn't be recognizable.

Noriko decided to go to the Mother of Faces and become Ursa again.

First, she had to explain to Kiyi what was happening.

"You're getting a new face?"

"Well, it's my old face. I'm going back to my old face."

"Will you still be my Mom?"

"Always dear!"

The next day, Noriko became Ursa once more and she properly greeted her son. "I'm so glad you found me."

"I missed you so much Mom!"

"What happened to your face?"

Zuko explained the Agni kai. Ursa wanted to just strangle Ozai but "he's dead now."

"What?"

"He got executed for his crimes."

"Related to the war?"

"No. He lost his bending for that."

Zuko wasn't sure how to tell their mother what Ozai had done to her older daughter. "He was convicted of aggravated child abuse and sexual battery." Zuko didn't mention that the sexual battery charge was actually for Chopsticks. It was a little misleading but he didn't know how else to say it.

"You mean, Azula."

Zuko nodded.

"What did he do to her?"

Zuko just cried. He couldn't say it.

"Is she alive?"

He nodded. "She's married now, and she has a son. You're a grandmother now."

That should have been happy news, but the earlier news was too upsetting. "Where is she?"

"She's in the Palace."

"So she lives at home."

"Oh, not our palace. She lives in the Earth Kingdom palace. She married King Kuei."

Ursa's mouth was agape. "Azula's the Earth Queen?"

"I'm surprised you didn't hear about it. The party was huge."

Ursa frowned. "I did hear that it was a raucous affair."

"Oh it was. They went on for over five days."

"How do you party for five days?"

"I'm not sure. I spent most of the time making sure no one tried to assassinate them again."

"AGAIN?"

As they made their way to Ba Sing Se, Zuko filled his mother in on what happened when Azula and Kuei got married.

* * *

Azula was in the garden with her son. She thought he needed time outdoors, whereas the doctors thought they should stay in that sterile room all the time.

"A little greenery never hurt anybody," Azula muttered as she held her son in the garden.

It was chilly, but he had a hot rock for a mother, and she kept him at the right temperature.

Ursa made it to the palace and the guard led her outside. "She went out about 10 minutes ago. She's probably by the water fountain."

The garden was huge. They had all different kinds of flowers, lined up in rows. She went to the right and saw her daughter holding a baby.

Azula was talking to her son. "You probably don't remember, but we've been on a lot of adventures together. I escaped three assassination attempts while I was carrying you inside me. You're already the best travelled baby on Earth." She kissed his head.

"Azula!" Ursa called out.

The Queen turned around to see her mother waiting for her.

"What are you doing (here)?" _How did her mother find her? Why did she come back?_

Ursa didn't answer. Instead, she just hugged her daughter, careful not to smash the baby. "I missed you so much."

It seemed so unreal. Ursa had never been happy to see Azula before. The Queen was so happy to have her mother holding her, she cried. When they finally let go, Azula said, "Do you want to meet your grandson?"

Ursa picked up little Thor. "He's adorable."

"He's an earthbender."

Ursa guessed that by his eyes. "He has your nose. He even has your pout."

Azula rolled her eyes. "He does not, but he and Zuzu have the same angry face."

Ursa laughed. "How's life as the Queen?"

"Exhausting. People always want to you to go to these events and get you to support various initiatives," Azula said as she shook her head. "I am their Queen, but I'm Thor's mother first. I can't just leave him with the nurses all day."

Trouble came outside and jumped on Ursa's lap. "Aren't you a cute tabby?"

"His name is Trouble, well because he is. Ty Lee gave him to me as a wedding present ... or punishment."

"Azula! He's cute and so sweet."

"He's a stalker."

Ursa still couldn't believe it. Her daughter was all grown up now. She was married and she had a child of her own. "How did you meet the Earth King?"

"Well, I crashed his party." Azula had not heeded much of her etiquette training that night.

As Ursa learned the story, she started to see how Azula had gone through a transformation of sorts.

"You put him in jail!" The day after she had conceived a child with him.

"I didn't realize he was the same guy. I didn't find out until after the war ended."

Azula had assumed she would be alone.

"It was fortunate that we started talking in the garden. "

Kuei came out to see his wife with his mother in law. The resemblance was remarkable. "How's my little sleepyhead?" Kuei scooped up his son and kissed his wife. "Hi I'm Tyrin."

"He has too many names," Azula told her mother.

"My father was also Tyrin, so they called me by my last name to prevent confusion."

"Lot of help that did," Azula rolled her eyes.

"Not my fault you missed that chapter in your history book."

"Like you ever read a history book."

"It's a pleasure to meet you Ursa."

"You're so tall," Ursa said to his amusement.

Aang was playing with Kiyi. He was going home the next day.

Noren couldn't believe the palace. "This place is enormous," he commented. "Is your palace this big?"

"Well," Zuko started.

"No," Mai said bluntly.

Zuko frowned.

"What? There's nothing wrong with your palace. It's quite exquisite, but this is just massive."

"I know," Zuko felt a little insecure about it.

"Why is he pouting?" Azula questioned as she brought Thor into the house.

"No reason," Zuko said as Mai answered, "his palace is too small in comparison to yours."

"It's not my fault, Kuei's a shower, and Zuko's a grower."

Zuko gasped.

Mai started cracking up. "That's fucking hilarious."

"No swearing in front of the baby," Ursa chastised.

"That was too good!"

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Zuko grumbled as Azula smirked.

"Just teasing my big brother here."

"Well aren't you always."

The nurse came in. "There he is. It's time for his nap!"

"He's just fine. I do know how to care for him."

"Then why do you take him outside?"

"I think the fresh air is good for him."

"It is, kids will be less allergic to stuff if they get early exposure to the outdoors." Noren commented.

The nurse grumbled.

Azula put him in his crib. "They're so overbearing." Everything was perfectly scripted for the boy. Just let him live.

Kuei went to go get Bosco. The bear had been surprised when Azula had come to live at the palace, but he could see how happy his master was with her, so he took to her quickly.

"That's a … bear!" Ursa was freaked out.

"Doesn't Ursa mean bear? You'll be fine," Azula retorted.

"You always were such a smartass."

"What's a smartass?" Kiyi asked.

Azula chuckled. "It's the opposite of a dumbass."

Ursa shook her head. "Maybe you should step back."

Bosco licked the girl, making her giggle. "He's a big fuzzy."

The bear gave her a piggyback ride around the palace.

Ursa had never been to Ba Sing Se before. She was looking forward to exploring the city and learning about the country that her daughter helped to rule.

Kiyi was excited to have a bear to play with.

Noren was excited by all the food, and Zuko was glad that his family was united again.


	17. Chapter 17

In the days after Ursa's arrival, she noticed her daughter becoming quieter, more withdrawn. She asked Zuko if he knew what was wrong with her, but he did not.

Mai had an inkling, but she wasn't sure if it was her place to say anything.

Noren finally said to his wife, "just ask her what's wrong."

Ursa frowned. She had never really known how to talk to Azula, but she had to try.

That afternoon, she found her daughter putting down Thor for his nap.

"Can we talk?"

Azula frowned, but she quietly moved out of the nursery and into her chambers. Ursa followed her.

Eventually Azula spoke. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Are you avoiding me?"

"What?"

"I was so happy to see you and Thor, and I thought you were happy to see me too, but it's like the longer I stay here, the more depressed you are."

"Do you think I'm a monster?"

Ursa was horrified. "Of course not. How could you think that?"

"Then why did you say it?"

Ursa almost didn't remember what her daughter was talking about, _almost_. Ursa had been fighting with Ozai about Azula's training. He was making her kill the turtle ducks with her bending. "You're going to turn her into a monster." She had yelled at him. Of course, Azula had been listening. She always heard the words that weren't meant for her ears.

"I was afraid. Ozai didn't care about anyone but himself. He would kill just to show off his own power. You always had so much passion and drive. I was afraid Ozai was going to stamp it out of you and make you like him."

Azula wanted to believe her mother, but when you spend half of your life thinking she hated you, it's hard to just go "oh that was a misunderstanding." Ursa knew it would take time, but she was willing to wait. She wasn't going to lose Azula again.

* * *

After about two weeks at the palace, Ursa got ready to go back to Hira'a. Things weren't great between her and her older daughter, but they were considerably better.

Before she left, Azula said something to her. "We have a festival every spring to celebrate the harvest. Maybe you could come. It's in the beginning of May."

Ursa hugged her. "I'll be there."

Kiyi didn't want to let go of Bosco. "Can we get a bear, Mommy?"

Ursa smiled at her little girl. "No way!"

"What about a platypus bear?"

"No."

"A boarcupine."

"Still no."

"Maybe you should start with a quail cat," Azula offered.

Ursa grunted.

* * *

**May 101AG**

Thor was old enough to go in public now. Before, Azula had been worried that he'd get sick since newborns have pitiful immune systems. She got a cloth baby carrier, so she could tie Thor to her front, leaving her arms free.

The nurse told her, "you should leave him home. He could get kidnapped!" Or get some type of fatal disease or get smushed if Azula falls on her face or perhaps get swept away in a large gust of wind.

"I'm sure he'll be fine," the King said, annoying the staff. He kissed his wife and then his son. "When is your mother getting here?"

"I'm not sure. She was trying to get Zuko to come. You know how he hates public events."

"Does he hate the public or the events?"

"He doesn't like it when people stare at his face or when they think he's an actor and they tell him the scar is on the wrong side."

Kuei made a face. "Maybe we should leave him in the palanquin."

"Oh no. We should make him walk."

They were just about to leave when Ursa came with Kiyi, Zuko, and Mai.

"What did you do to your husband?" Azula questioned raising an eyebrow.

"Noren said he'd meet us there later."

"He's sleeping isn't he?"

"Yeah he is." He was "exhausted" from all of the travel. He wasn't waking up until it was time for lunch.

"Say hi to your uncle Zuzu," Azula told Thor. He smiled and drooled a little bit.

Zuko just frowned.

"Aw, isn't he cute?" Mai cooed at the baby.

"When are you two making an heir?" Azula questioned.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"No swearing in front of the baby," Ursa told her again.

"What's fuck?" Kiyi asked her.

Mai made a horrified face.

Azula only snickered.

* * *

They took a carriage to the festival, since it was faster than taking a palanquin. The streets were full of people. There were stands selling food and carts selling merchandise: Kyoshi dolls, Aang dolls, Long Feng voodoo dolls, and lots of shirts.

Azula got her baby a Dai Li onesie. Ursa frowned. "Aren't those the agents who helped you conquer the city?"

"That's why it's funny."

Kuei thought it was humorous. "I bet the nursing staff will flip out."

"We should change him into it before we get home."

Zuko made it about 30 minutes before they got him into an observer tower where he could watch the festival and get fed without having to be near the public.

"That's about 29 minutes longer than I thought he'd make it," Mai told Azula.

Kiyi wanted a doll. For some reason, she wanted the Long Feng doll. "Why does it come with needles?"

Ursa gasped.

Azula and Mai started cackling.

Kuei saw the perfect shirt. "I need to get this."

They were selling shirts with a throne on it, and the letters on the bottom said Property of Azula.

He surprised everyone when he came back wearing it.

"Why would you encourage her?" Ursa questioned.

Azula kissed him. "Now he's just telling the truth."

Eventually, they headed up to the tower so Zuzu wouldn't be lonely, Thor could rest, and Azula could eat without walking at the same time.

The Fire Nation used to have festivals like this to celebrate the dragons. After the war started, however, the festivals in Capital City became rallies to get people excited about the war. Azula had never gone to anything like this as a child. "You're a lucky boy," she told Thor. He was asleep, not that he would have known what she was talking about if he was awake.

Azula felt Kuei's arm wrap around her. She felt lucky too.

* * *

Noren never made it to the festival. He woke up and realized all the food he could eat was in the palace, so he didn't leave.

He was still stuffing his face when the family returned.

There would be fireworks at night, but they could see them from the palace, so there was no need to go back.

Kiyi showed her father her Long Feng doll. Ursa had confiscated the needles.

The nurses made the most amazing faces when they saw the Crown Prince dressed up as a Dai Li agent.

"We should get him a royal guard onesie so he can infiltrate the Fire Nation," Azula told her husband.

The nurses just put Thor down for another nap. "You shouldn't mess with his mind like that!"

Despite what the nurses feared, Thor would have a happy, (mostly) healthy childhood. His parents were raised in opposite ends of the spectrum. Kuei had been isolated from his bending and his political responsibilities. Azula had known nothing else. Together, they would find balance.

* * *

Sorry this took forever. I had a birthday, family visiting, I went to Berlin, but I swear I'm going to get these stories out. I also have finals coming up and I'm going to after Christmas Florida, but it will happen. This is the end of the story, but there is an epilogue coming.


	18. Chapter 18

**Epilogue **

**Summer 102AG**

It had been over a year since Ursa was reunited with her children. Zuko was finally getting married. This was the first royal family wedding at the palace in twenty years.

It was the middle of July. There had been a prediction that the fire lilies would come early this year, and they did. The year before they hadn't come up until the end of August. The flowers were quite finicky, making it hard to plan for their arrival, but the wedding was set for just the right time.

Mai's father was ready to give his daughter away. After two years, Mai would finally be Fire Lady. Her mother was in the front. Tom Tom was the ring bearer.

"This is so beautiful!" Ursa teared.

Azula was glad she could get drunk at this wedding. Thor was eating solid food. The nurse told her to breastfeed him longer but at the beginning of the month, he started reaching for her steak. She decided to only breast feed him sometimes and she was going to give him solid food for the rest of the day and to start tomorrow.

Azula had a flask in her purse. She started to sip.

Iroh stared at her. "You better share."

She forked it over, the cost of doing business.

Kuei had Thor for the ceremony. They were sitting with the Earth Kingdom delegation. Azula was sitting with her mother, sister and stepfather. Kuei thought she should be with her (other) family since it was Zuko's big day.

The Fire Lord's palms were all sweaty.

"Chill!" Sokka told him. The warrior was his best man. "You are all nervous and why. You know Mai's all into your body."

"Shut up fool!"

Finally, Mai's father led her down the aisle.

The Head Sage proceeded to marry them.

They didn't recite their vows. Mai didn't think it was anyone else's business what she had to say to her husband about their marriage.

Zuko kissed the bride and the crowd cheered.

There was a recess until the banquet started. Cocktails would be coming out in an hour or so.

Everyone was giving his or her wishes to the bride and groom.

Azula was finding her husband who had metalbended Thor a jail.

"What did he do?"

"Oh nothing. We were playing cops and robbers."

"I'm robber!"

Azula laughed as she kissed his head. Kuei had a certain whimsicalness to him that she was glad her son inherited. "Want to mingle with the other guests?"

"I'd rather hand him to Ursa and sneak you upstairs."

"You're very naughty."

"Coming from you that's quite a compliment." He kissed her nose.

The nurse came and was fussing about Thor being in jail.

He escaped with Azula's help, and then Thor said. "I'm the koala lamb!"

"You're on the lam," Azula laughed. Her baby was the best.

He got to take his nap, and the cocktails came out.

Azula and Kuei toasted before drinking one.

"These are weak," Azula complained.

"I know."

They went to the bartender and Azula promised him 100 coins if he doubled the strength on the drinks."

"But Ursa wanted people to behave themselves."

Kuei offered two hundred, and it was a deal.

Needless to say, people were tipsy by the time they were to sit for the banquet.

Ty Lee was feeling good. "Oh Mai, you're so pretty!" she slurred.

"How drunk are you?"

"Not too drunk to give my speech!"

"Oh boy!"

Azula had a smug look on her face.

"I thought I told them to go easy on the pouring," Ursa said.

You did, Azula thought to herself.

Thor was reaching for the bread. He pulled himself onto the table to crawl to it.

"He's a hungry one." Kuei broke up the roll into small pieces for his son.

Thor happily popped them in his mouth.

"We didn't even start the meal yet," Ursa complained.

"He's a baby. He doesn't understand ceremonies!"

Ursa thought she should be teaching him.

"Let him be innocent and un-traumatized by etiquette until he's five."

"Three?"

"Five. I want him to be normal and enjoy playing in mud and hanging out with common children."

"The nurse cried when you said that," Kuei teased.

"She must swear I'm guilty of child abuse for letting him play in the dirt."

"I wasn't allowed near dirt as a child."

"Is that why your own bending confuses you?"

Toph had been giving him lessons. She was baffled by his lack of training.

"They said that bending was for the working class, that the nobility didn't do it."

"I bet Toph loved that."

* * *

The metalbender just twisted Fong's fork into a slinky.

"HEY!"

She feigned innocence.

Her father glared at her but said nothing. He sat with the rest of the Council at the King's table, but the King with Azula at the Fire Lord's table tonight.

They rant the bell to start the meal.

The first dish was grilled oyster prawns with a spicy lemon sauce.

Thor tried to eat his. Azula helped him.

"Can he eat spicy food?" Ursa asked.

"He doesn't care." Azula had inadvertently given him some spicy food the other day, and he ate it easily.

The nurse came to scold her. "Spicy food is bad for the baby."

"Poppycock. I ate spicy food coming out of the womb."

"It's true," Ursa said. "I tried to wean her with hot sauce, and she didn't even care."

The nurse shook her head.

"Does she do that often?" Mai questioned.

"All day, every day." Azula found it amusing now. She had mentioned to the doctor one time that she was nervous about being a new mother and they said, "we'll help" and have been hovering over her ever since.

"I'd go crazy."

"I just enjoy getting on her nerves." Azula waved to the waiter and got more wine. The nurse also thought she shouldn't drink in front of the baby.

The nurse huffed as the Queen drank. "Little lush!"

The dinner was traditional Fire Nation fanfare, spicy meat, lots of tofu and rice and roasted vegetables.

"Are you going to have a dance off Zuzu?"

"Don't call me that! Also, no way."

"Oh you should challenge him," she told her husband.

"I wouldn't want to upstage the groom."

"Too late," Azula commented as she kissed him.

"Haha," Zuko said mockingly.

It was a five-course meal. Fire Nation meals used to be nine courses, but Zuko thought that was way too long, so they served five larger courses.

"Do you think we got more food here or at Azula's wedding?" Sokka questioned.

Suki shook her head. "They gave us plenty of food."

"They did, but at Azula's wedding I was really full!"

"You also drank yourself into a stupor."

"It's all good. Aang can sober me up!"

Suki shook her head.

It was time for the speeches.

Azula went first. "Today is a joyous occasion. My best friend is now my sister, and Zuko actually left his office."

The audience laughed.

"From what I can tell about weddings, if you insult the groom, the crowd laughs at you, but it's not a good idea to insult the bride."

People snickered.

"So, I will tell a story about how awesome Mai is and will simultaneously make fun of my brother.

It didn't take much to see that Mai and Zuko liked each other. To Ty Lee and me, this was obvious, and I loved to torment them about it.

One day, I asked Zuko and Mai to play a game with me. The game was to knock the apple off Mai's head with your bending. I put an apple on Mai's head and set it on fire. Zuko was so alarmed he ran towards her and shoved her into the pond, falling in with her, and they were soaked.

I'm sure you're wondering how this story makes Mai awesome. Well, here's the punch line.

Mai didn't snitch on me for my prank. She was much too clever for that. Instead, she waited until I had forgotten about it. Ty Lee and I were playing in the garden and she threw some stilettos at Ty Lee. She had planned for them to miss, but I was in such a panic, I tackled Ty Lee and we both fell in the pond."

The crowd started laughing.

"Not only did she pull a prank on me, but it was the same one I had played on her, making quite a mockery of me. Ordinarily this would have been the perfect prank, but I reacted by setting Mai's shirt on fire, and Zuko threw her in the pond to save her.

Needless to say, we have fun making each other miserable, and I'm glad to say Mai's now my sister. Zuko, don't throw her in the pond anymore."

Ty Lee went next. "Since Azula has explained how bizarre our friendships with each other are, I'll tell another story. Before Zuko got banished, he took Mai on a date. He showed up in his formal robes and brought her flowers. It was so textbook that it was adorable.

Azula and I followed them of course. Azula hellbent on sabatoging their date and I just wanted to watch.

He took her to the fondue restaurant downtown and Azula had a great idea for sabotage. She poured some white wine into their fondue.

Unfortunately, the waiter brought the fondue to another person's table. We expected Mai and Zuko to get drunk, but instead the Mayor of Yu Dao got wasted."

Ty Lee stunned the crowd with this revelation.

"Azula couldn't figure out how her plan went wrong until she saw the Mayor fall down when he tried to get his coat on.

We caused some other mischief that night such as changing the metronome on the stage for the show they went to so all of the music played too fast and spooking the ostrich horse that pulled their carriage, getting it to take off through the park, but somehow, we only made their date more amusing.

You two deserve a lifetime of happiness after putting up with us, so Azula and I got you a present.

Azula took out a cage that had a baby dragon in it. "Here you go big brother."

The crowd laughed and cheered. The Fire Lord had a dragon.

Sokka went last. "Alas, I don't have any epic stories, so instead I'll talk about Zuko and Mai and why they make the perfect match.

At first, they seem like an unlikely couple. Zuko is often getting angry. His face turns red. He yells. Thor inherited his angry face, so you'll see lots of it in the future."

The crowd chuckled.

"Mai often has a blank expression on her face. You can't tell what she's thinking and usually, she seems bored of you. I could just imagine Zuko throwing a hissy fit while Mai filing her nails, not even turning her head to see what's wrong. It just puzzled me to no end.

When Zuko asked me to be his best man, I realized I didn't actually know that much about him and Mai. I know him and I know Mai, and they are together, but their relationship largely eluded me, in a way many others didn't. To my chagrin, Katara and Aang are always kissing. I'm sure I could come up with too many words for their wedding day."

The crowd snickered. Katara turned beet red.

"Zuko and Mai, however, what did I say about them?

I pondered it for a while, but I never really came up with anything. Anyhow, it's two days before the wedding, and I realize I need a speech. So I go to ask someone what I should say, and I see Zuko about to eat this croissant. The next thing I know, a glass ball rolls down the hallway and Zuko chases after it, probably so he doesn't lose it and then Mai appears and steals his croissant.

She looked at me and goes, "it works every time."

I couldn't believe it. Anyway, Zuko comes back and instead of being angry, like I expect him to be, he just goes and reveals a second croissant that he had hidden in the cupboard.

"You knew she was going to take it?" I asked him.

"Yeah. Her doctor told her to stop eating so many buttery foods, and she tries, but she can't help herself."

"So he just ordered two croissants and waited for her to steal the first one. If that's not love, I don't know what is. They're perfect together."

Azula was cracking up. "Oh he had the best story of all."

Mai looked a bit embarrassed that her savory secret got out.

* * *

Now that the laughs were had, they moved on to the couple's first dance. Mai made Zuko take lessons before the wedding.

"I took lessons as a child," he told her.

"And you sucked at it then," she reminded him.

She was grateful that he wasn't stepping on her feet or her dress right now.

Ursa was so happy. "I can't wait until they have a baby."

Azula hadn't said anything yet, but she and Kuei were going to try to make another baby in the fall so they could have a summer baby. There was a superstition when it came to mixed blood children that the season of their birth would influence their bending. Azula thought if she had a summer baby, it would be a firebender.

Thor was sleepy. His mother put him to bed and on her way back, Kuei took her hand. "How about we sneak into your room?"

"You naughty boy."

He carried her away. "Oh yeah."

Their clothes came off before they reached the bed. Azula wanted to be in charge but Kuei metalbended cuffs to her, putting her hands over her head.

"No fair!"

"You taught me how not to play fair." He grinned as he kissed her lips.

At the party, the father daughter dance was next and then the floor was open to everyone.

People started to hit the floor.

Aang looked around but he didn't see Kuei or Azula. "Where did they go?"

"Probably doing their dance moves upstairs," Sokka quipped.

"You hush," Katara chided.

"We brought the karaoke stuff from Azula's wedding. I'm calling Mai out!"

Katara shook her head. "She'll kill you."

"Nah. We're totally tight!"

"How drunk are you?"

"Very!" Whoever is pouring the drinks right now is awesome.

When Ursa confronted the bartender, he said he was pouring lightly, but she tasted one and disagreed. "Fine, Kuei paid me to make them stronger."

"What?"

She went to confront her son in law, but he was absent. "Where is he?"

"Oh that was the perfect warm up," Azula told her husband.

"To think, we've been married almost two years."

"I know." She kissed him. "And what a two years it's been."

Chin knocked on the door. "Your mother found out about the booze!"

"Damn it. We should have paid the bartender to keep quiet."

"We'll be fine. Once Ursa has more to drink, she'll relax."

"That's so Earth Kingdom of you."

"Good thing I'm the king then."

Stupid!

He kissed her nose.

They got dressed and went downstairs. Azula just got to the bartender when her mother appeared, "what were you thinking, making the drinks stronger?"

"I was thinking if people drink weak drinks all night, they would just have to pee the whole time. Less liquid is better."

"We don't want them acting like lushes!"

"Why not? Rich people are naturally lushes."

Ursa shook her head.

Kuei found his wife, and said, "Let's dance."

Azula handed her a drink. "Seriously Mom, just drink more, and you will be happier."

"Azula!"

The queen smirked as her husband led her away.

* * *

Two years ago, she never would have guessed that she would get a happy ending. The Princess getting her King seemed too fairytale for her, but her she was dancing the night away with him, and all of their family and friends. Her son was only a baby, but she couldn't wait until his wedding. She wanted him to have a happy ending too.

Sokka waited for his chance and then commandeered the speaking trumpet. "DJ Sokka is BACK!"

Zuko's eyes got big. "Oh NO!"

"OH YES!" His wife retorted.

"I hope you're all ready for some musical awesomeness."

"WOOT!"

"Tonight we have yours truly, The Earth Queen, the White Lotus, and a duet from our newlywed couple."

"NO we do not!" Zuko insisted.

"You so lost this Zuzu," Azula told him.

"Stop calling me that!"

Despite Zuko's protests, a night of drunken hilarity awaited all of them.

People started to dance. For the most part, the guests moved less salaciously than they had at Kuei's wedding, but they were still having a great time.

There was no encore of Bootylicious. Instead the girls danced to a new song, Baby One More Time.

The Seven Sisters wore (shortened) schoolgirl outfits.

Ursa was traumatized.

Fire Lady Mai did not have to watch them practice this time. Instead Suki got the honor.

There were plenty of whistles and cheers as the girls danced, and when they got off the stage, they seemed to have a fan club forming around them.

To try and snap his mother out of her shock, Zuko had them cut the cake.

The happy couple fed each other, and Ursa had the guards watch Toph so she didn't cake any one in the face. Unfortunately for her, Azula caked Kuei in the face. The nursing staff was appalled. "How could you teach your son violence?"

Thor shoved his own face in some cake, and everyone else (except for Ursa of course) thought it was hilarious.

After that fiasco came the singing.

"I'm not singing," Zuko told his wife.

"But I already picked our song."

Zuko could not get out of singing "The Closer I Get to You," with Mai. Again, he threatened to fire all of his guards.

**THE END**


End file.
